


Deified

by ProneToRelapse



Category: Legacy of Kain
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Experimental Style, First Timeline, M/M, Post-Blood Omen, Pre-Soul Reaver 1, Slow Burn, The Time of the Clans, Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProneToRelapse/pseuds/ProneToRelapse
Summary: "As long as a single one of us stands, we are legion."Resurrecting a decimated line will not be easy, but Kain made his choice long ago and he is determined to rule Nosgoth in her decline.Before the clans, before the complete subjugation of the land, before he learned what history and fate would demand of him, Kain would raise six lieutenants through whom his iron will would be enforced, and upon whose might he would one day lead an empire of smoke and ash and blood.This is the founding of that empire.
Relationships: Kain/Raziel (Legacy of Kain)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the first iteration of the timeline, so BO2 hasn't happened yet, because the paradox that caused it hasn't occurred. This is my take on the raising of the lieutenants and the forging of Kain's empire. It has taken me... A very long time to parse the LoK timeline well enough to write this and I have written it solely for my own enjoyment.
> 
> That said, I hope it vibes with you. The Raziel/Kain tag is..............horrifically barren. I intend to fix that.
> 
> Peace!

For the first time in his unlife, Kain decides to err on the side of caution and he ventures out into the encroaching dawn to hunt alone. It’s an easy enough task, what with human idiocy and their foolish superstitions and rituals that hold no weight when tested and they come face to face with the creatures of their nightmares, even if they believe Kain’s kind to have fallen into legend. That may have been so, had Kain not crossed time itself and in doing so escaped the clutches of Moebius’ cutthroats, and he cannot blame the human cattle for settling into complacency. Which is why the last hour of shadow before sunrise has become Kain’s favoured time to hunt.

The world at large still sleeps while the sun begins its sleepy ascent, save for a select few who chose those hours to begin the day to get a head start on productivity. Farmers, caravans, merchant travellers, these are the denizens of early dawn, and these foolish humans have become Kain’s prey of choice.

He hunts one such fool now; a lone merchant departing Nachtholm and likely bound for Steinchencroë, for all the good it will do his business if he arrives, leading a handsome bay charger that is cruelly overladen with various packs and bolts of cloth. Kain would quarrel with him on principle regardless of his hunger, for treating such a fine beast as little more than a donkey rather than the proud warhorse it deserves to be, but he’ll settle for quenching his thirst on this occasion rather than diminishing the bastard for misusing his mount.

From the shadow of the trees flanking the winding path, Kain silently stalks his quarry, footfalls passing light as mist over the ground as he creeps ever closer, unheard and unseen.

Or, at least, he _was_. A branch cracks underfoot somewhere to Kain’s left and he freezes on instinct, tapered ears pricking with unease. He is not the only one to have heard the blasted sound, for the merchant freezes as well, stiffening at once though he draws a meagre dagger with his next sharp inhale, breath misting in the chill morning air. Kain merely sighs and straightens up, resigning himself to watching the scene play out without acting, for the moment.

He’ll consider it a training exercise, if it all goes sour.

He doesn’t have to wait long for the action to commence. With all the subtlety of a charging bull, a ragged streak of white and black rips from the trees, all blazing eyes and fledgling eagerness, barrelling into the hapless merchant without the slightest shred of grace. The merchant’s mount rears and shrieks with fear as its master is tackled to the dusty ground and it bolts down the road at speed, terrified whinnies shattering the last of the morning’s stillness.

Kain rolls his eyes before breaking the line of trees and watching the bloody scene play out before him. The merchant, throat torn to shreds, gurgles and bleeds handily to death on the ground, which Kain counts as a dreadful waste because barely a drop of that blood makes it into the mouth of the troublesome fledgling who has rather ineffectively stolen Kain’s kill.

Raziel, precocious, irksome creature that he is, sits back on his heels and grins ferally up at his sire with gore painting the lower part of his face. He looks incredibly pleased with himself, which is somewhat amusing considering he could not have done a poorer job if he’d tried.

Kain levels him with a glare and Raziel’s shoulders droop at once, chastened. “I believe my words were “stay put and wait for my return”,” he says testily and Raziel droops further in response, halfway to lying on the ground beside his still-twitching prey. “I don’t think my instructions were particularly difficult to follow. Please, explain to me exactly where I lost you.”

Raziel keens mournfully, glancing at the fading merchant like the almost-corpse will provide the excuse he needs to offer up to Kain in recompense for his idiocy. Kain clears his throat pointedly and his fledgling flinches, skittering back a foot on his knees.

“Hungry,” Raziel says to the ground, head bowed guiltily. “Couldn’t wait.”

“And yet,” Kain drawls, kicking the corpse with the toe of his boot, “had you waited, I would have returned shortly with a full meal for you. Now we’ll have to track down another idiot for you to eat, all the while risking exposure to sunlight, just because you were too impatient to do as you were told. I find disobedience intolerable, child, regardless of the circumstance. I _do_ so hope this isn’t going to become a habit of yours.”

“No,” Raziel promises with as much sincerity as he can muster, which is considerable when taking into account he’s not yet progressed to full sentences. “Won’t. I'll wait.”

“Good.” Kain sighs heavily. “Well, there's nothing to be done about it now. Make yourself useful and fetch that beast, will you? Might as well get _something_ out of this mess you’ve made.”

Thus chagrined, Raziel is now quick to obey, scrambling to his feet and tearing off after the charger with all the speed of the young. Kain does what he can to make the evisceration of the merchant look like an animal attack, scraping dirt over the worst of the blood splatters to assist the charade. He’s not too concerned about a single corpse being found and reported to the local villages, mainly because there will always be rumours of dark creatures lurking in the shadows, but the longer he and his fledgling can operate without arousing suspicion in the locals is a benefit for them. He’d like to have more time to re-establish their endangered race before they are discovered, if he can manage it.

Raziel gives an urgent shout and Kain abandons the cooling corpse for scavengers and crows to feast on in favour of joining his struggling fledgling and the beast he is attempting to wrangle with little success. He at least has a secure grip on the reins, but the beast will not calm down, as terrified as it is by the proximity of what it has correctly identified as a predator.

Kain has no such difficulty in calming the animal, approaching from the side to avoid stray hooves and running a palm over its neck and murmuring a few Charmed words to supernaturally calm it. The effect is instantaneous and the animal lowers its head with a soft whicker. Raziel looks delighted and reaches out to pet the beast’s nose now that it is sedate. He grins at Kain who, despite his earlier irritation, cannot stop the faint smile that flickers across his face in return. He ruffles his fledgling’s hair with some affection and takes the reins, beckoning Raziel to follow close by.

“Perhaps the fault lies with me,” Kain muses aloud as they walk. “I am inexperienced with raising fledglings, after all. Perhaps I’ve coddled you by providing your food for you all this time. Maybe you would be less of an abysmal hunter if I just turned you loose upon the countryside. You’d learn quickly how to fend for yourself after the sixth or so time you got run out of a village with torches and pitchforks.”

For all that he’s not yet adept at verbalising, Raziel cannot be called stupid, for there is a light of supreme intelligence in his eyes that tells Kain his words are understood even if the response he desires is lacking. He’s gotten rather skilled at interpreting Raziel’s various sounds in the meantime, and each day has Raziel rediscovering words he once knew when his flesh was still living and human. The progress is slow but heartening, and Kain is eager for the days when they can converse without having to resort to pantomiming their intentions like a pair of amateur travelling thespians.

Now however, Raziel seems disinclined to answer at all, neither with his sparse vocabulary nor his repertoire of sounds. He’s disheartened, most likely, by his decidedly inelegant kill and is probably still viciously hungry. Kain doesn’t want to appear as though he’s rewarding disobedience and sloppy hunting practices, but unless Raziel can quench his thirst soon, they’ll be caught outside when dawn breaks and will have a host of new problems on their hands to content with, least of all a starving fledgling with poor impulse control.

How frustrating indeed.

“Raziel,” Kain says on a sigh, halting the horse and his fledgling simultaneously. The horse stops without complaint, still Charmed and docile, but Raziel turns to look at him slowly, reluctantly, and Kain can see he has indeed begun to sink into melancholy.

How Vorador had managed to sire dozens of the wretched things at once, Kain will never understand. Just one is enough to exhaust him. Trouble is, Kain is going to have to repeat this process multiple times if he is going to create the army he’ll need to claim Nosgoth for his own.

“Come here,” Kain orders, halting the horse and beckoning to Raziel. The fledgling obeys somewhat reluctantly, sidling up to Kain with wariness twisting his fine features, as though expecting to be cuffed round the head for his misbehaviour. Tempting as the thought is, Raziel is too intelligent to be mistreated under the guise of discipline, so Kain forgoes the institution and removes the bracer on his wrist. Raziel watches curiously as Kain brings his bare wrist to his mouth and bites into it, pricking a vein with his fangs before offering it to Raziel.

“I doubt we’ll find another meal before sunrise,” Kain tells him. “Drink your fill for now and we’ll try again tonight.”

Raziel bows his head with gratitude and takes Kain’s wrist in eager hands, lifting it to his mouth and closing his lips over the puncture marks that are already welling over with blood. Amusingly, he only ever seems to eat with anything approaching dignity when he’s taking blood from Kain, which is a mercy, to say the least. Kain doesn’t favour the idea of having to heal a wrist torn to shreds by his fledgling’s overeager eating habits.

It’s also the only time Raziel exercises any kind of restraint. He’s hesitant to take too much, though he’s fully aware Kain can spare it, and keeps pausing to look up at his sire before continuing with his meal. He eventually stops of his own volition and gives a low, contented sigh, wiping a hand across the back of his mouth for all the good it does, as it’s still caked with the dried blood of the unfortunate merchant. Kain licks over his wrist to heal it and Raziel suddenly darts forward to nuzzle under Kain’s chin in thanks.

“Little fool,” Kain calls him affectionately and Raziel hums happily. “Tonight, you’re going to hunt for yourself. Perhaps that will teach you the necessities of taking more care with your prey. Blood may be a limitless resource, but accessing it is no easy task these days.”

Kain can put aside his own hunger until tonight. He’s gone longer without feeding and though the burn in his throat is uncomfortable, it’s not going to send him feral or weaken him beyond what he can handle. It’s more important that Raziel feeds regularly than it is for Kain to eat when he wants to, given that Raziel is still very young and has not finished recovering from his body’s long-deceased state.

“Come, child,” Kain beckons, urging both horse and fledgling into motion once more. “Dawn is nigh and I am weary. Let’s go home.”

* * *

“Home” is nothing grand, nor is it the kind of lodging Kain feels is befitting his status as father to his race and soon-to-be Lord of the land once his army is raised, but it serves a purpose and was not particularly difficult to obtain. It’s little more than a cottage on secluded farmland past the forest that he’d claimed by slaughtering the inhabitants, and though it’s not entirely to his tastes, the livestock serve as sufficient nourishment when solitary, travelling humans are few and far between. Or they had, before Raziel got to them.

They return to the farm now, just as the sun threatens to rise from behind the mountains and send Kain’s skin prickling in discomfort. Raziel darts forward into the shadows of the cottage, shuffling anxiously from foot to foot as he waits for Kain to board their stolen horse and unburden it of the merchant’s wares. Kain has no need of money, but he’ll take the wares into the nearest village on the next overcast day that occurs and trade them for whatever he feels they may need while Raziel finishes his recuperation.

Once the horse is stabled, Kain joins Raziel at the threshold of the cottage and slips inside just as sunlight spills over onto the land, bolting the door securely behind them. The shutters on the windows are never opened so once the door is closed, the light is securely shut out and they are safely enclosed in cool darkness once more. Raziel moves over to the wash basin to soak a cloth and wipe the worst of the gore from his face, but Kain is not satisfied to let him just wipe it off and sleep, so he drags the tin tub out from an alcove in the cottage’s kitchen and sets about preparing water for a bath. Raziel makes a mournful sound when he sees it.

“Enough of that,” Kain chides him, lighting a fire in the hearth to heat the water. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but you’re frankly disgusting, child.” Raziel sulks predictably, but he’s quick to help regardless of his opinions on water when Kain fixes him with a glare.

Bathing is somewhat difficult when vampire flesh responds so violently to the touch of water, but Kain finds that a brief stint in a washing tub is nothing close to the acidic touch of stream or lakewater, which makes the whole institution a great deal easier. Raziel fares a lot better considering his skin is currently closer to human than Kain’s, recently ended millennium of death notwithstanding, but he still acts as though bathing is the worst thing Kain has inflicted on him in his new life. And though he complains, Raziel usually finds being unclean a wholly unacceptable affair, and is pleased to be clean though he resists the process of attaining said cleanliness with all the stubbornness of an ox.

Once the water is heated and the tub filled, Kain unceremoniously dumps his wayward fledgling into the tub and Raziel splutters angrily as the water sets his skin to stinging. He’s being frankly childish about it, for the water does little more than itch, so Kain adds insult to injury for his own amusement and upends a jug of water over Raziel’s hair. His fledgling grumbles from beneath his sopping fringe, glaring balefully at his master for a moment before he ceases his petty objections and sets about cleaning himself.

While Raziel is preoccupied with his ablutions, Kain lays out the spoils they recovered from the morning’s quarry, perusing over the packs’ contents with some interest. The fabrics aren’t the best quality, some sort of cotton blend the merchant had probably wanted to pass off as silk to the first hapless tradesman he came across, so Kain doesn’t fancy his chances of fetching more than a handful of silvers for them at best, or perhaps some new clothes if he can strike the right kind of barter with a seamstress. He sets the bolts aside and digs into the first pack to catalogue their spoils.

He’s disturbed once Raziel deems himself suitably bathed and clambers out of the tub without care, sloshing water all over the floor and shaking himself like a dog. He sits himself down in front of the blazing hearth to dry and Kain sighs deeply with exasperation that is more than a little fond. Vorador had once said that raising fledglings was like herding sheep and Kain had been inclined to believe that at the time, having no experience of the institution other than Vorador’s own. Now that he is a sire himself, Kain finds that having a fledgling is more like wrangling an excitable terrier than a docile and easily frightened sheep, because Raziel finds wonder in everything, yet has not even a scrap of common sense rattling around inside his head.

“I do find myself wishing you’d retained _some_ of your humanity,” Kain tells Raziel’s gently steaming back. His fledgling flicks a tapered ear but doesn’t turn, content as he is to watch the flames dance in the hearth. “If only so that we could converse more easily. And possibly so that you wouldn’t be so impetuous all the damn time. Though, taking into account the possible circumstances of the life preceding your death, perhaps it’s best that you don’t recall anything of your former life. You’re perhaps the only person in the world who doesn’t actively want me dead.”

Raziel huffs faintly at that and finally turns. When he does, Kain can see a faint smile on his face. “Not dead,” Raziel tells him, like that’s the most amusing thing he’s heard. “My Kain, not dead. With me. Life wanted. Keep always.” He frowns for a moment at his dearth of effective vocabulary, though Kain parses his meaning well enough and smiles indulgently.

“Yes, child, I am with you. And thank you. It’s heartening to know you don’t harbour any secret resentment toward me. I’d be highly disappointed if you were in actual fact plotting my demise.”

Raziel grins. “Couldn’t. Kain is... “ He gestures to his own temples. “Has… Vast.” He taps his forehead, above his left brow. “More than my own.”

“For the moment,” Kain says, absently unfurling a scroll from the merchant’s pack to see its contents. Trade records, how dull. “But I suspect that’s only because I possess the ability to articulate. It won’t be long before you can debate circles around me, I’m sure.”

“Probably,” Raziel says with a mischievous grin and Kain laughs.

“Off to bed with you, little fiend,” Kain orders, still chuckling. “Tonight, you hunt alone and I want you well rested and on top form.”

Raziel obeys without complaint, retreating to the nest of furs and linens he’s claimed for his own bedding and settling down with a happy sigh. Kain clears away the merchant’s belongings before heading to bed himself, stretching out on the bed with a jaw-cracking yawn. He is asleep in moments.

* * *

_“Raising fledglings is no easy task,” Vorador said with characteristic solemnity, claws clasped behind his back like a tutor instructing a student, a common bearing of his that had rankled Kain’s pride often since their first meeting. “You are augmenting a life with our dark gift and to do so your will must be absolute. In attempting to pass on our blessings, you must first possess the fortitude of mind necessary to erase all that there was within the human before. You push out everything that previously existed, and write over it with your will.”_

_There was no question that Kain’s will was absolute. He did not think it particularly arrogant to assume this, merely fact evidenced by all he had accomplished since his resurrection. If there was anyone in Nosgoth with a will to rival Kain’s own, let them make themselves known, for he would sorely like to meet them._

_“When my Sire created me, it was like a fire lit within my soul,” Vorador continued and Kain resisted the near-overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. “I felt it within me, scorching away all that I ever was as it remade me. I do this now, when I sire my own fledglings, though I feel the overwriting to a lesser extent as its catalyst.”_

_“This is all very well and good,” Kain said flatly, impatient, “but what is the method? The technique? How does one go about passing on the gift? Myths say little about the process. Humans believe it is a bite to the neck, but if that were the case there would be myriads of vampires laying siege to Nosgoth as every victim we’ve ever put our fangs to resurrected as one of our kind.”_

_“It is not so easy, for if it were, that would indeed be the case,” Vorador said. “Let the humans have their superstitions.” A dismissive wave. “The more they think they know, the easier it is for us to play with their ignorance and make meals of them, because their arrogance makes them easy prey. And as always, they are incorrect. It is our blood that carries the gift. We drink the blood of humans to survive, but for a human to ascend to our near-godhood, they only need to partake of our blood and enter the state of change. They will emerge reborn and thus a fledgling is created.”_

_“Then what does will have to do with it?”_

_Vorador smiled. “Everything. When you use your blood to nourish a human, a connection is forged, through which you must guide your intention into your blossoming fledgling’s body. If this process fails, the subject will expire as mortals do. If it is successful, their soul will be changed and you may call your fledgling to rise.”_

_“And all of our kind possess this skill?”_

_“It is our transference,” Vorador said. “We cannot beget offspring and I do not know if it is a naturally occurring skill or if the wisest of our race enchanted their own blood to be able to pass on the gift, but all that matters is the act. My master bestowed the gift upon me, and as you have seen, the gift continues on through my own blood. All vampires, from low born to high, are able to pass on the blood gift. It should be no difficulty for you to achieve it.”_

Except Vorador had been wrong. It was perhaps the deepest and most acute source of shame to Kain to be so impotent at raising fledglings of his own, and with Vorador dead, there is no one left to guide Kain in his endeavours, no one he can turn to for answers now that it seems his blood does not possess the magics necessary to sire any more of their race. Kain had been counting on this, more than he’d let himself believe, and to be faced with failure after failure had struck a deeper, harsher blow than he’d been prepared to withstand.

It would be a few decades after that conversation that Kain would attempt to create his first fledgling - twenty years over Vorador’s passing, which was foolish in that Kain knows now he should have attempted to sire fledglings when he still had the elder vampire’s guidance, guidance he had taken for granted at the time.

To his intense dismay, each and every attempt would result in failure and night upon night he would still try again, the crushing sense of defeat only intensifying each time he enacted the same intricate ritual that Vorador once described, would steal a new human away and spend hours attempting to cast his will upon them to no avail. He could Charm them with no difficulty, could subjugate their feeble human wills on a whim, but each time he attempted to forge that connection Vorador spoke of, he would feel nothing but an empty void where that connection should be, and the human subject would expire almost the exact instant his arcane blood touched their lips.

And now he has no one to guide him in his endeavours, the secrets of passing on their dark gift have been forever lost with the death of the last of their fathers, fallen into legend along with the rest of Kain’s kind. At the time, that vicious and wholly unfamiliar sense of defeat had nearly engulfed Kain from within. How could he restore their race if he himself, the last surviving vampire in Nosgoth, could not from his own blood regenerate what Moebius’ bloodthirsty crusade had decimated?

It would be years of furtive solitude before Kain attempted to create another vampire again. But this time, inexplicably, it would be different.

Having wielded the Reaver blade for centuries, Kain had become accustomed to the blade’s own wants and whims; the inexplicable eddies and currents of its desires felt as keenly as his own. He’d named the blade kindred the first time he had taken it up and had not then understood the gravity of his own proclamation. He is still woefully ignorant of the blade’s true nature he knows, but having been its bearer for centuries he at least understands the arcane weapon’s hunger and can satiate that as easily as he can his own. It’s symbiotic in a way that stokes the flames of Kain’s ever-growing violent whims, that he might gorge himself on the blood of his victims whilst his beloved blade drains them of their soul.

It is the blade that draws Kain now, guiding him with a fervent sense of urgency toward an unknown destination. Kain has never felt the blade so animated, never felt such a deep sense of compulsion, and rather than wasting time battling the blade’s intent, he merely acquiesces with no small sense of curiosity, allowing it to guide him across Nosgoth as it wills, content and almost eager to discover what has drawn the blade’s attention.

That is how Kain discovers the crypt, whole but forgotten, nestled here in a quiet corner of Nosgoth where it should have faded into obscurity. As with all creations of the Sarafan, the tomb is ornate and superfluous and clearly built to last, for time has not yet ravaged the architecture, nor have the creeping vines encasing the marble yet cracked the stonework beneath. Built to endure, the tomb of the Sarafan stands undaunted, forgotten, and sentinel to whatever the shifting ages will wreak upon Nosgoth in the path toward her future.

Though he would be content to leave the thrice-damned crypt and its decaying contents to its eternal rest, there is something contained within that has so incensed Kain’s beloved sword that he cannot simply turn away and leave the tomb to rot. The Reaver hums in his grip, reverberating like the plucked string of a lyre, and if Kain listens with his mind rather than his ears, he can almost hear the blade uttering a low, mournful note to accompany its arcane vibrations.

It is to be a journey into the resting place of the pride of the Sarafan, then. Kain’s blood sings with the joy of the profane.

It is not an easy task. The Sarafan, for all that they were cruel and self-righteous, were also overtly fond of building structures that bordered on impenetrable. But Kain is not content with finding an entry of least resistance, and finds it perfectly conceivable to simply force his way inside. The air within the tomb is stale and reeks of dust and decay so Kain speeds his traversing so as not to tarry and suffer the foul, dead air for longer than necessary. The Reaver reverberates more violently with every step and Kain uses the endowed weapon as a form of dowsing rod to locate that which he does not understand.

In the end, he still does not reach enlightenment, as he steps into the cyclical chamber housing the martyred lions of the Sarafan order. The best of a self-righteous breed, their coffins are remarkable in that they all bear the names of their entombed, flourished and decorated so as to honour the dead with sentiments they cannot appreciate. Kain does not pretend to hold any knowledge of the Sarafan’s lore and history, finding the order’s fleeting existence and lasting legacy as infuriating at best and resenting it deeply at worst. It was this order, after all, that decimated Vorador’s lineage so thoroughly and assisted in the extinction of their kind, save for Kain’s solitary existence.

Were he a lesser man, Kain would defile the crypt in a petty act of callous blasphemy, and the urge rises the longer he stands amongst the long-dead. But drawing his attention is the curious singularity of the Reaver, clamouring now like a struck bell, it’s previously ephemeral cries rising to a deafening crescendo.

Kain is no stranger to the curious resonations of time and he feels it now, the warping convergence of ages and he knows intrinsically that he stands here among martyrs because he is meant to be here, and his wilful, sentient blade has answered the call of destiny as best it can.

With a sense of awe for the convergence of time and not out of respect for the Sarafan dogs, Kain approaches the fairest of all the coffins, reaching out a claw to brush dust from the carving of the saint’s name emblazoned forever in the stone.

_Raziel._

A comely name, not befitting the martyred bastard who lies here. Disinterested, Kain makes to turn away and the Reaver shrieks.

“Your demands are incomprehensible,” Kain berates the blade, feeling wholly foolish but too incensed to act appropriately. “Have you no wisdom for me that I can parse? I know you want me here but I have no explanation as to _why_.” He is met, unsurprisingly, by sepulchral silence and that singular, chilling song of the Reaver. Kain growls with frustration. “This is ridiculous. How am I meant to aid the passage of time correctly if I have no one to guide my endeavours?”

It is the most peculiar thing to have a question answered when you are alone. If Kain were a lesser man and not himself one of the creatures that lurks in the dark, he would be chilled to receive the answer cast from ephemeral winds. It is not an answer he receives in words, but more a pressing of intention pushed into his own mind, the meeting of two unbendable wills in a conjoining of comprehension.

The Reaver _sings_ for him and Kain turns slowly back toward the coffin of Raziel. All at once, time rushes forward to meet him.

Kain should have suspected that his unique resurrection did not lend itself to the commonality of his kind. He is companion to their ilk but not born of their ilk, and Mortanius’ hand in his rebirth should have been taken into account when Kain doggedly questioned Vorador to reveal the secrets of sharing their dark gift. It would likely not have served to give him the answers he did not then know that he would end up seeking, as the laws and whims of vampire nature are not able to be documented, as far as Kain has discerned, for they are as varied as the personalities to which they belong, and cannot be explained simply.

Yes, Vorador and his lineage may have been able to pass on the dark gift by virtue of sharing blood, but Kain is of a different line entirely, possibly the only vampire to have ever been raised by human hands. It would be a distasteful origin, to be sired on a technicality by someone as pathetic as a human, but Mortanius had at least been a Pillar guardian, so Kain does not spend undue amounts of time cursing his unorthodox beginning.

The main point is that it makes a twisted sort of sense that Kain cannot progenate vampires through traditional means. Vorador could not enlighten him towards this fact because the older vampire had simply not known, and it was unlikely that anyone besides Mortanius would have been able to advise Kain in his endeavours to raise his own brood. Possibly even Mortanius did not know the method Kain would need to use to raise fledglings, so even if Kain could span time once more, that particular question would remain unanswered.

No, this time Kain would have to divine his method for raising vampires alone.

But not _wholly_ alone.

The Reaver, ancient and terrible in ways Kain can only aspire to become in time, seems to hold the knowledge Kain desires but has no way of passing that knowledge on beyond its otherworldly shrieking. Kain tries desperately to interpret its will to no avail, and all he can discern is that the Reaver seems to want Kain to defile the Sarafan tomb in order to raise the first of his vampiric children. The intensity of the blasphemous act is a delicious one if Kain can figure out how to enact it. Blood does nothing, or at least has yielded little results so far, and Kain spends three days in the crypt trying to decipher the Reaver’s desperate yet incomprehensible commands.

Leaving the crypt only to hunt and cleanse his lungs of the dank air of decay intermittently, Kain spends hours in the dark of the tomb trying to puzzle his way through the conundrum he is faced with. He has taken to leaving the Reaver blade embedded in the ground in the centre of the chamber encasing the Sarafan because attempting to leave with it causes the blade to shriek as though in agony and Kain cannot bear the pain that incensed screaming visits upon his own psyche. This is, unfortunately, not something he can just mark off as a lost cause, for if he wants to keep the Reaver, he will have to find the way of acceptably pacifying it so that he can cease the incessant screams.

Blood does not work and he doubts necromancy will serve him here, which is a form of blessing because Kain does not want to have to study for an age the art of animating corpses just so he can regain the use of his favoured blade. No, there must be another way and he _will_ find it, no matter what it is.

It would be helpful, though, if he knew where to even start. If he had any clues as to how Mortanius achieved his own resurrection as a vampire, he might be able to work backwards from there and fathom his own method for imparting the dark gift. Blood is not the answer, which means it can only be sorcery, which Kain has a limited grasp on, but nothing that lends itself to the complete revival of a centuries-dead corpse.

Perhaps the answer lies within Vorador’s own words. He had mentioned will, so perhaps that will serve Kain here, should he be able to utilise it. But how to impose his will on a corpse that has none of its own will left over from life that has long since abandoned its form? The only thing Kain can surmise with any real certainty, is that the dead bodies surrounding him need some kind of life force inhabiting them before he can bring about the vampiric change, and the only thing he can think of that might spark life again would be a soul.

The Reaver shrieks frantically and Kain winces as pain lances through his head. But more than pain, there is _understanding_ and for the first time in days, something within him shifts. For the understanding is not his own, it is purely of the Reaver, like it has comprehended his very thoughts and is forcefully attempting to agree.

The soul… Of course it would not be simple. How in god’s name is Kain meant to harness long-since departed souls of the dead? Is he meant to call out to it like an idiot shepherd calling for a lost lamb? Stand sentinel nearby yelling for this Raziel’s soul until it sees fit to flitter back into the material world on a whim like a capricious cat? Ridiculous.

And yet…

Perhaps it was always meant to be so, for the moment Kain considers the soul, the Reaver’s constant cries reach a deafening crescendo, as though it is imploring Kain to act, reinforcing the notion that Kain already contains the knowledge to do so. Perhaps Kain really is equipped to act as the Reaver so sorely wishes, and his only limitations are his needless doubts.

Perhaps it is not so complicated after all.

Kain takes up the Reaver and approaches Raziel’s coffin once more, treading with certainty this time the path he has worn into the dusty ground with days of confused pacing. The lid is already dislodged, for Kain had dripped his own blood into the corpse’s decaying maw in his first failed attempt to raise it. Now Kain regards it with a blossoming sense of wonder, caught firm in the realisation that this is the fulcrum on which the turning point of his destiny is poised. If he succeeds here now, he will have the means to raise his army and claim Nosgoth as his rebirthright, as he decreed he would do when he rejected the sacrifice.

Kain places a hand on the corpse’s hollow chest, mindful not to press too hard and crumble the delicate carcass into dust. The other hand he tightens on the grip of the Reaver for fortitude and casts his mind out for any trace of a wandering soul, senses amplified by the Reaver’s own power.

Nothing. Only silence.

And _then_.

It is only a flicker in the darkness - barely there - a single candleflame attempting to illuminate a moonless night, but Kain sees it and he calls to it with everything in him, attempts to summon it back to the body in which it belongs. It will not obey him, dances maddeningly out of his reach, and no matter how hard he tries, Kain cannot make it obey him.

He needs a catalyst, something to draw the soul back. He needs--

His will.

He knows what he has to do.

It seems that raising his fledglings will not be a matter of simply sharing his dark gift with them, as Vorador had done countless times. To raise his army, Kain will need to give more of himself than his blood.

It hurts. More so than any wound he has yet suffered in his unlife, more so than crawling back from the precipice of death still impaled on his enemy’s sword, more so than the chronically painful, deeply entrenched sense of wrongness he has been assailed by since his own Pillar’s collapse, Kain finds that separating his soul is the most agonising ordeal his body has ever had to endure. He bellows with it and the Reaver echoes his cry as he rips a portion of his soul, of his lifeforce, out of his very being and bequeaths it to the corpse below. The moment the offering passes from him, when Kain suffers the keen absence of it as a chill hollowness in his chest, when the core of his being reshuffles to accommodate for it, the very moment his soul settles within the corpse he sees it, that lone candleflame, weak and flickering but _responsive_. It shudders and finally, impossibly, answers Kain’s desperate call.

He’s flung back from the corpse by an unseen wave of force, the Reaver knocked from his grip. He collides with the far wall with enough force to crack bones and sits dazed for a moment while his ribs reform in his chest and while he sprawls, dazed, the corpse of the long-dead Raziel utters a howling, agonised cry. The sound echoes throughout the crypt and then silence overtakes once more and all is still.

Kain gets slowly to his feet, drawn inexorably towards the corpse that now houses both part of his soul and the soul of the long departed human who once served the Sarafan. When Kain has approached, he sees that the corpse has not altered, it is still a corpse, still decayed and ruined, but it is _moving_. Horrified, Kain watches as the corpse’s ragged and incomplete chest rises and falls in a gruesome façade of breathing, through lungs that turned to dust centuries before. It is nothing more than an echo of life but Kain has to maintain the belief that in time it will become _more._

Blood. Now that life has been breathed back into the corpse, blood must finally be the answer.

Snatching up the Reaver, Kain steals from the tomb to bestow upon the very next human he encounters the singular honour of being the first to feed his firstborn.

* * *

It takes three weeks for Raziel’s skin to reform. It is a deeply unsettling process, but one Kain finds he absolutely cannot look away from, morbidly fascinated by watching the centuries of decay reverse themselves by virtue of Kain’s soul. It takes extraordinary amounts of blood to accomplish, and Kain is caught between constant ventures out of the crypt to capture humans by the dozen, and standing vigil over his first vampiric child’s coffinside to oversee the horrific process.

Raziel screams the entire time. First it is just wheezing, hitched cries that make little noise without complete lungs, throat or lips to aid its endeavours, but once his skin has reformed and his organs begin to regenerate next, his cries raise in volume until he is shrieking with the agony of rebirth. Kain is wholly inexperienced as both sire and progenitor, but even he and his cold heart cannot abide the sounds of his firstborn’s torment unaffected. He takes to combing claws through the lank wisps of hair sprouting from Raziel’s head, then carding them through thicker locks once they begin to regrow. He doesn’t know if it is helping at all but he cannot just do nothing, and sometimes it seems as though Raziel’s cries soften the longer Kain remains by his side.

After six weeks, Raziel’s cries become moans, quieter which is a mercy, but no less distressed. His skin is rough and twisted but whole now, and in his regeneration Kain can see the traces of a highborn jaw, an aristocratic nose, cheekbones that might have once been chiselled and proud.

Everything about Raziel’s remaking promises a perfect vampire. Kain is desperately impatient to see his efforts completed.

At eight weeks, Raziel stops crying out and his skin begins to soften and rehydrate.

At ten weeks, he loses the grey tinge of death to his skin and his handsome features are finally fully revealed. Emaciated but with skin almost glowing in its paleness, Kain discovers that this man formerly of Sarafan origins is possibly the most beautiful creature Kain has ever seen. Thick dark hair, full lips, chiselled features, he fans the flames of Kain’s vanity and pride with his appearance. A perfect specimen to receive the first portion of Kain’s gift.

At twelve weeks, he finally opens his eyes. They are the brilliant blue of pure aquamarine and watch Kain with a quiet kind of intensity that promises a deep intelligence.

“Welcome, child,” Kain murmurs, helping his fledgling to sit up. “Welcome to your new life. Do you know me?” Raziel gazes at him, expression slipping into one of reverence and Kain finds he likes being regarded as such _intensely_. “I am Kain. Your master and creator. And you are Raziel. Firstborn of my descendants. My right hand. My sword.”

Raziel clutches his arm tight enough to grate the bones beneath the muscle. Kain permits it, because though his resurrection may have been fundamentally different in method, he knows the disorientation is likely the same, acute and overwhelming.

“I have you, child,” Kain purrs, brushing claws lightly over the elegant arch of Raziel’s cheekbone. “I have you.”

* * *

Vorador treated his fledglings like family, which had confused Kain at the time. For someone who seemed to bestow the dark gift on every pretty face he encountered, it did not seem that Vorador would have the time to dote on every creature he sired, yet Kain saw the evidence of this even in their limited time together. Vorador’s fledglings adored and revered him, and he treated them all like kith and kin to the best of his ability, cultivating their loyalty with skill.

And Kain had not understood it. Could not. He’d left his own family home and never once looked back, yet Vorador seemed to regard the concept of family above all else.

 _Now_ , Kain is finally starting to understand. He’ll never be the patriarch of a family of flesh, will never even know if the lineage of his family endured through his siblings or cousins, if there are any of his name out there to carry on a line that was severed with his death. Yet for all that the human concept of progeny is lost to Kain, he can at least create a lineage far more enduring than the meagre genealogy of flesh.

Blood is, after all, thicker than the water of the womb.

He had been prepared to guide Raziel with violence if need be, to beat the fledgling into the mould Kain had mentally fashioned for him out of his own desires. He had been sure that, should it come to that, he would warp Raziel into a ruthless beast of violence and rage, and would utilise that ferocity for his own ends. To subjugate Nosgoth, he would need little more than brute force and numbers.

But Raziel is… strange. The bloodthirst sits heavily inside him but it does not rule his head. He is a rational, thoughtful creature, motivated by curiosity and a keen love of a challenge. It seems that Kain, quite by chance, has created a fledgling from the corpse of a man with a gift for strategy. And Kain is pleased by this, inordinately so. He had wanted - thought he wanted - a beast, a tool, a dog beholden to only one master who could command him as he saw fit. Raziel is no beast, free-thinking and intelligent, logical and astute, all these things Kain recognises in him before his fledgling has even fully regained his powers of speech.

 _Little one,_ Kain calls him, with far more affection than he had ever been prepared to feel. _Little fool,_ when he errs and Kain has to correct him. _Little fiend,_ when what Kain assumes to be facets of his human personality shine through and guide his actions.

 _Princeling,_ Kain calls him in quiet moments, because that is what Kain has decided he will be. The firstborn of an empire, godlike in his power, second only to Kain. _Princeling,_ Kain calls him, but only ever within the privacy of his own mind.

As is befitting nobility, once Raziel reaches near-full coherency and Kain has finished instructing him in the noble teachings of their race, he has every intention of returning to the crypt to raise the rest of the entombed Sarafan to serve him. It feels like the most perfect form of retribution, to immortalise the bastard warrior-priests in servitude to him and he’ll delight in each attempt, no matter the pain it visits upon his soul each time he will have to rend it anew. He finds he considers the practice wholly worth the agony, especially considering Raziel has turned out better than he could have hoped.

His fledgling, while still susceptible to the eager impetuousness of the young, is equal parts deadly and cunning. Kain can already see what kind of vampire Raziel will mature into, sees it now in the curious glint in his eyes and the way he pours eagerly over whatever books they can find in their quiet, companionable traversing of Nosgoth. He’s also shaping up to be an effective hunter, if he would just take a few more moments before striking to consider the possible dangers, and if he would stop being so messy and wasteful when he eats, Kain would consider him a perfect vampire already. As it stands, Raziel has taken to unlife more adeptly than any of the fledglings Vorador had raised.

“You’ll be instrumental in my conquest, Raziel,” Kain tells him one late morning as he washes the latest in a long line of messy kills from his fledgling’s face. “Through you I will command your brethren, and we will raise an army to take back what is rightfully mine.”

Raziel listens whenever Kain speaks with a kind of single-minded focus for which Kain is deeply appreciative. It’s the first time Kain has been faced with someone so focused on his every word and he _likes_ the attention Raziel fixes on him, even though he wishes Raziel’s progression toward full maturity would hurry up and complete. His words come easier week by week but he still cannot fully express himself and it’s beginning to frustrate the fledgling, which Kain has no idea how to soothe.

That’s also extremely peculiar. Kain was not born cruel, neither would he consider himself particularly so. He’d perhaps offer that circumstance has warped him slightly, and that the cruelties he has suffered, dealt by fate and circumstances both, have twisted his outlook somewhat into something more jaded and bleak. He doesn’t quite have Vorador’s taste for torture or slaughter for slaughter’s sake, but he cares not for human life at all. Raziel on the other hand, Kain finds he cares for perhaps more than he has ever cared for another. He held great respect for Vorador when he lived, had in his impetuous youth harboured the promise of feelings for a handful of suitors, deep and passionate _in potentia_ , but for Raziel there is pride and there is protectiveness. And in that unfamiliar mix, there is also something that Kain cannot quite name, as inexperienced with it as he is.

Affection? Definitely. But something else he feels confident will reveal itself by name when the time is right.

It is that affection that gives Kain the idea for how to soothe his fledgling’s frustrations. He cajoles Raziel out of their stolen home with the promise of an invigorating hunt, but when they pass further than they have yet travelled together before, Raziel’s air of frustration falls away into his innate curiosity, deepening with every league they cover under the blanket of night. It is a journey Kain has not made in centuries, and one he did not think he would make again until he was ready to conquer Nosgoth for good, but he finds that his fledgling’s despondency is as unacceptable to him as his own would be and he will do anything to see Raziel’s spirits lifted.

It is not a journey that can be made in a single night, no matter how high their supernatural endurance has become. Neither can they continue to travel during the day, so they have to break up the overall journey into three nights. Were they human, it would take just under a week for them to travel the same distance, so even though Kain is impatient to reveal his plan to Raziel, he takes comfort in the fact that his fledgling will discover their destination for himself soon enough, and will hopefully derive some small semblance of joy from the venture.

Coorhagen is not at all how Kain remembers it, for half a millennium has passed since the last time he returned home. New buildings have been raised and the city streets themselves seem to have been reordered in new and confusing ways that render Kain’s memories wholly obsolete, but given that he and Raziel are not constrained to walking the streets like humans, it matters little how the overall geography of the city has altered.

Raziel seems to sense something in Kain’s bearing change the moment they pass the border into the city proper, and he nudges Kain’s arm with a questioning sound. Kain turns to him, is met with bright, inquisitive eyes that shine in the moonlight and is quietly surprised to find a depth of concern within.

“Look upon it, Raziel,” Kain murmurs, gesturing to the sprawling city stretching out beneath them. “I was born here centuries ago. Human and ignorant. I haven’t returned in many years. The last time I was here was in the midst of a plague outbreak. It’s changed much since then.”

“Home?” Raziel asks with a distressed sound. “Is that why you've brought us here?” He frowns, curiously upset by a concept Kain is not privy to. “Are we to leave the cottage?"

"We shall have to some day soon," Kain says. "We cannot rule Nosgoth from a _farmhouse_ , little one. But no, that's not why we're here. Coorhagen will never be home to me again, not when all of Nosgoth is set to become my own kingdom. No, I brought you here to show you something wonderful. At least, I hope it has survived the many years since my last visit.”

“Show me,” Raziel says, all at once eager again. “I want to see all that you have seen. Show me what you know. I want to see the world as you have seen it.”

Kain hums in approval. “And so you shall, little one. It will be my honour to show it to you. Come.”

Across the rooftops they pass like ghosts, unheard and unseen by those foolish enough to wander in the night. But fortunately for the fools below, neither of them are on the hunt tonight, so they may continue on in their wretchedly limited existences for a little while longer.

He is gratified when the building he is seeking emerges from the shadows not a moment too soon. The sky overhead is fading from deep black to sunrise indigo and they are slowly losing their sanctuary of darkness. It does not matter that the world below will be waking soon; Kain is confident they can remain unhidden until they are able to move about freely, but for now they scale the walls of Coorhagen’s vast and ancient library, slipping inside the topmost window just as the sun begins its ascent.

“A library!” Raziel exclaims in an excited whisper, voice still carrying in the still dark. The building is as vast as it is old; reclaimed from a cathedral belonging to a religion that had been defunct long before Kain was even born, Coorhagen’s library was the place Kain spent many a day as a studious young boy, accompanying tutors and instructors as he strove to deepen his knowledge with an education afforded him by the rank of his birth. It is the one thing in the city of his upbringing that has remained the same, and he can see the evidence of the passing of time in the ravaged murals that have cracked and been poorly repaired in the years following its partial destruction.

“We don’t have much time,” Kain murmurs, placing a hand on Raziel’s shoulder before his overeager fledgling can tear off and get himself lost amongst the tomes for the rest of recorded time. “The humans come here during the day, we’ll have to wait for nightfall to explore properly.”

Raziel makes a pleading sound, looking from Kain towards the multitudinous rows of books and scrolls as though waiting a single second longer will kill him. Part of Kain wants nothing more than to unleash Raziel upon the knowledge of the library to his heart’s content, but humans will be here very soon to use the library for their own purposes, and Raziel is not yet practiced enough at controlling his bloodlust to walk among them as a hidden predator the way Kain can.

“As soon as night falls,” Kain promises him. “I have not brought you here just to let you look but not explore. Just a few short hours and you may go.”

Raziel casts one last look towards the aisle leading toward the first of the shelves before surrendering and allowing Kain to abscond with him up to the belfry. It is the perfect place for them to wait out the day, secluded and in a state of disrepair that assures Kain no humans will wander up to disturb them.

As excited as he is, Raziel is still young, and though he can boast of higher stamina in his fledgling state, travelling almost constantly for three days is enough to tire him out considerably. The moment Kain is settled, propped comfortably against the flagstones, Raziel is drooping and pitching to one side, suddenly too tired to even remain upright. Kain huffs a laugh and tucks Raziel against his side, wrapping his cloak about the both of them so that they might find a few hours of peace, sequestered away where sunlight cannot reach them.

It is the clanging of heavy wooden doors that rouses Kain again, and even if it hadn’t been loud enough to wake him, the sudden and excitable wriggling of his fledgling as he works to untangle himself from Kain’s cloak would have done it.

“The humans are gone,” Raziel says in a rush, words tripping over themselves in a hurry to get out. “Please, _please,_ I want to go.”

Kain pretends to think about this for a moment and Raziel whines, long and loud, until Kain smiles and shoos him with a flick of his wrist. “Go, little one.”

Raziel is off like an arrow from a bow, descending the age-worn wooden scaffolding until his boots hit the lower stones with the barest of thuds. He disappears down an aisle the moment he lands and Kain follows at a much more sedate pace, set on finding some candles to illuminate their way. They can see fine without them, but it will help lessen the oppressive air of this once holy structure.

Having previously availed himself of a good portion of the library’s wealth, Kain settles down with the first book he finds that looks reasonably entertaining, though he spends little time actually reading and elects instead to watch Raziel’s voracious explorations of the shelves. He’s comical in his eagerness, tearing from one end of the library to the other, climbing shelves without use of the rolling ladders for books he has deemed more interesting than the ones below, and before too long he has amassed a considerable pile that he stacks on the table beside Kain’s own solitary tome.

“You can’t read all of those in one night,” Kain points out, amused.

Raziel’s eyes glint attractively at what he eagerly takes as a challenge. “I can try,” he says and opens the first book.

It really is unfair, Kain thinks, now completely disregarding his book in favour of watching Raziel read, just how beautiful the fledgling is. In the low candlelight his skin almost seems to glow, and his icy eyes, alight with such keen intelligence, dart back and forth as he hungrily devours the words on the page before him. His hands have not yet formed claws, will not for a good few years by Kain’s recollection, so his fingers are still neat and slender, nails clean and trimmed because a part of Raziel’s personality that has shown itself is that the creature is particularly fastidious about his state of cleanliness. This is amusing for the sole reason that, a few short months ago, Kain had to quite literally stuff him into the bathtub like a filthy, reluctant dog.

When the time comes for Raziel to hopefully sire his own fledglings to aid in Kain’s army, he hopes that Raziel’s developing tastes will show themselves then, too. Kain can already envision it, his beautiful and deadly first lieutenant, sire of a lineage of graceful and beautiful fledglings to bring ruination upon their foes. The thought is incredibly enticing, not just for the reason that Kain is eager to bend Nosgoth to his will, but because the image of Raziel in Kain’s mind’s eye, deadly and resplendent, is a uniquely fetching one.

And… Ah. Well, they do say libraries are the houses of discovery. Though Kain’s realisation that his fledgling is wholly desirable does not feel like a particularly new one. Rather, it was more of a slow creep of awareness and understanding, as Raziel continued on his path to full maturity and the true span of his personality finally emerged.

Something to consider, then, when Raziel finally takes up his position as Kain’s first lieutenant. Yes, definitely something to consider, should Kain get his way. Which, it should be mentioned, he usually does.

“What are you reading?” Kain asks after an hour and Raziel has somehow moved onto a second book.

Raziel pauses, turning the cover and tracing the ornate title with a finger. _“Debased Coinage of Nosgoth’s Early History,”_ he recites, slow and careful, pronouncing every word as though they belong to a prayer and not the title of the most boring book Kain has ever heard of in his long life.

His eyebrows raise in full disbelief. “An entire library at your fingertips, Raziel, and you pick _that?”_

Raziel splays a hand over the book’s cover as though to protect it from Kain’s derision. “Someone thought it interesting enough to document,” he argues. “The least we can do is read it and respect the work they did to preserve their knowledge.”

Kain shakes his head, charmed by Raziel’s fire. “You’re going to find out the hard way that humans pen an awful lot of rubbish, child. Why waste time and effort on this drivel when you could avail yourself of the _real_ truths of history?”

Raziel’s eyes narrow. “Show me then,” he demands, successfully goaded into closing his woefully boring book. “If you have opinions on which books I should read, present them to me and I will read them instead.”

“I’ll not force you to read anything,” Kain says with a dismissive wave. “You must develop your own interests as I keep reminding you, not simply parrot mine. I only implore you to be more discerning with how you spend your time. Although…” Suddenly thoughtful, Kain rises from his chair, quickly scanning the signage on the shelves for what he hopes will still be within the library’s repository. He’s in luck, as it turns out, and he only has to search for a few moments before he locates a book he can dimly remember through the faded and half-forgotten eyes of his human self. He returns and hands the book to Raziel who takes it in reverent hands. “Try this one. And if you like it, keep it. I would rather it stay with us than serve humans who will squander its knowledge and use it for their own, pathetic ends.”

Raziel brushes dust from the cover. _“The Fundamentals of Victory.”_ He looks up at Kain. “What is it about?”

“This,” Kain says, tapping a claw against the cover, “was written by my great grandfather’s father. He was a feared warlord in his time and penned this in the final years before his death. Through it, I learned all I know about strategy and warfare. As someone as fond of puzzles and complexities as you, I think this will be more than acceptable to your inquisitive mind.”

Kain is not expecting the reverence with which Raziel regards the book now that he knows it contains the words of his sire’s ancestors, but he’s not displeased about it. The respect Raziel holds for all that Kain is, while currently only earned through the simple act of resurrecting him, is a heady thing indeed. Kain promises himself that by the time the rest of Raziel’s brethren are raised, Kain will have truly earned that respect a hundredfold.

It is the first time Kain can ever recall wanting such a thing. He has commanded respect before like he is owed it, which he feels he is, somewhat, as both the sire of the new vampire race and the Lord that will one day govern their might. But he wants Raziel to look upon him and see someone worthy of the wealth of respect the fledgling already holds for him. He wants to earn it and that notion is wholly new and exceptionally powerful.

Though while he already seems to command Raziel’s respect, capturing and holding his attention is another thing entirely. It seems that for all his considerable power, Kain cannot hope to compete with the written word, and has effectively stabbed himself in the foot because now Raziel has the wealth of mankind’s knowledge at his fingertips and seems wholly disinclined to divert his attention from it for the foreseeable future.

Kain smiles to himself. Ah, well. If it makes Raziel happy for now, it will come back to benefit Kain soon enough. Securing loyalties is never a wasted endeavour, even if the payoff is a little delayed.

It’s rather novel actually, to have some time where he isn’t required to do anything for a little while. Nothing is pulling at him, demanding of him, attempting to command him into action, to fight, to maim, to kill. He can just sit for a time and rest for the sake of resting, something he’s long overdue for, in fact cannot recall doing since his resurrection. It’s rather pleasant to just sit without responsibilities weighing on his mind, somewhere Raziel can keep himself occupied and out of mischief without Kain having to keep a watchful eye on him, so Kain decides to take full advantage of the opportunity and settles down in his chair with a faint and unbidden sigh of contentment. For a time the only sounds are the turning of pages worn with age, the gentle crackle of the candles, and Raziel’s soft breathing in the quiet dark. It’s wonderfully peaceful.

Then: _“...“For Nosgoth, proud and decorous land that she is, has never recognised a monarch and likely never will. There have been rulers, aye, and all have been peaceable or tyrannical in turn, we have seen all kinds come and go, they who name themselves as kings upon a land that ought never to be ruled, but their reigns have been short and destined for ruin. By my seventh year I came to know no authority but the righteous hand of my father, and beyond him no higher power than that of the ealdorman, and the holy Pillars we all served by virtue of being born into their realm”.”_

Raziel’s words are slow, measured, paced in gentle, even cadence with the rhythm of Kain’s ancestor’s words. Kain knows these words, they are familiar to him in a way little else is in this age, and in Raziel’s smooth, silken voice, they are sweeter than honey.

“Sorry,” Raziel murmurs in a hush when Kain stirs. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I just wanted to feel the words for myself.”

“Peace,” Kain replies on a sigh. “You may read aloud if you wish. It’s rather pleasant.”

Raziel hums. “If it please you,” he says, but he sounds satisfied with Kain’s response. He takes a moment to find his place again, then clears his throat and begins reading from where he left off, lulling Kain back into that charmingly serene place between wakefulness and sleep.

_“”As all children are in our noble land of Nosgoth, my siblings and I were raised to revere the Pillars. Ancient, unknowable structures that, in all my travels I’ve yet to encounter among even the lowest curs a hatred of them, as so many holy relics do. Perhaps it is that we can each see day to day the prosperity they afford us through their silently sentinel benevolence, in the clear running of our lakes and streams, in the verdure of the very earth we till and harvest and in the bounty of life that springs forth each year. Never have I considered beyond what was taught that the Pillars are anything more than an extension of Nosgoth herself, and in my final years I think it only respectful that I afford them their due deference for blessing me with the bountiful life I have led…””_

* * *

Five hundred years. Five hundred years and for all his experience, Kain has never felt fear this keenly before in his _life_. When Mortanius called him back from oblivion, Kain had renounced all the failings of his weak human flesh in favour of his new vampiric existence, and had eschewed fear as a past weakness no longer fit for his remade flesh. Not once has Kain feared for his life or for the safety of another. He mourned in his own way when Vorador was lost, but mourning is not akin to fear.

Now? Here in this moment? The fear Kain had banished as folly rushes back with a vengeance, threatening to overwhelm him in ways he has never experienced and therefore has not learned to guard against.

He has been trying desperately to wake Raziel since dusk to no avail. The fledgling lies unresponsive upon the furs of his bedroll, limp and lifeless without even breath to move his silent chest. He has no heartbeat for Kain to feel, no pulse to track, so he might as well be dead and Kain would believe him to be beyond a doubt, were his body to turn to ash upon the furs beneath his cold body. Only the fact that his body remains untouched and the fact that, having stilled his frantic endeavours to rouse him for the moment, Kain can still sense the echo of his own soul within Raziel’s body manages to temper the rushing flood of fear chilling Kain’s blood.

Raziel’s soul is still present. That is reassurance enough to stay the overwhelming and unfamiliar panic for now. But Kain will not be truly calm until his firstborn wakes and Kain can more accurately ascertain his precarious condition for himself. He’s no physician but he is the last surviving mature member of his species, and he cannot remember ever falling into unconsciousness that wasn’t caused by…

Oh.

Oh, Kain is a wretched _fool._

Raziel is not injured. There’s nothing wrong with the fledgling at all. Kain had forgotten, Raziel’s creation might not have been orthodox, but he is of Kain’s vampiric lineage all the same, and Kain himself has entered the state of vampiric change only twice in his unlife. He’d had no reason to believe Raziel would be the same, but even taking Kain’s inexperience into account, he should have considered the possibility that Raziel would share some of his vampiric traits, when he houses a portion of Kain’s soul inside himself.

“Little fiend,” Kain snaps, even as he finds himself weak with relief. “I’ll tan your sorry hide the moment you wake up. Fine one moment, unconscious the next. Don’t ever do this to me again.”

Raziel, of course, does not respond, but now that Kain knows he is not in fact dead, he’s feeling a tad less generous towards his troublesome fledgling than he probably should be. Now though, he can at least leave Raziel’s side without panicking for his fledgling’s welfare, in order to prepare suitably for when Raziel returns to him. He’ll not go until nightfall and won’t stray far, but he’ll need to make sure they have blood on hand for when he wakes or Raziel is likely to go feral the moment he rises and remembers his unwillingly neglected hunger.

“Don’t do this to me again, Raziel,” Kain threatens with more force than the situation strictly calls for. “You’ll regret it, I assure you.”

It is an agonising three weeks before Raziel wakes again. Three full weeks without so much as a sigh or a twitch of a single finger, and with each day that goes by without hearing Raziel’s soft voice or his laughter or his increasingly verbose and belligerent opinions, Kain inches closer and closer to despair. He has been the last of his race for more years than he would care to recall, but after only four short months in Raziel’s company, he has been lifted from pains of loneliness he hadn’t even realised he had been suffering, only to be cast back there without a thought the moment Raziel succumbed to his torpor.

Kain does not spend those three weeks idle. Had he done so, he would have sent himself mad long before Raziel rose anew. Instead he hunts every second night, returning with fresh blood that he decants as best he can until they have plenty to hand for when Raziel wakes. He risks a trip into the nearest village when the day is overcast enough to shield him and Charms his way to some new clothes for the both of them because theirs are already worn and Kain’s cloak has a rip in it that is beyond his skill to repair, as unwieldy as his claws are for finer crafts.

He does not know what traits the first evolutionary sleep will yield for Raziel, as he cannot see any physical manifestations changing Raziel’s body while he convalesces, but he keeps vigil over him until his own exhaustion overwhelms him and he slips into the unconsciousness caused by bone-deep exhaustion, and does not wake again for several hours.

When he does wake, a few days shy of a full month since Raziel slipped into repose, it is because faint sounds of distress have crept into his awareness and the moment his weary mind registers them, he is flung back into wakefulness at dizzying speeds.

“Raziel!” He lurches forwards, sending himself down hard onto his knees at Raziel’s bedside. It is unbecoming, but in that moment Kain has never cared less for his reputation and all he wants, all he needs, is to know that Raziel is alright.

And his fledgling _is_ alright, physically at least he is unharmed. But Raziel has twisted himself up tightly in the furs of his bedding and is perspiring as though feverish, though his skin is as pale as ever. His face is turned into the furs and he is clutching them to his face as though pained, and Kain can do little else aside from try to coax Raziel to look up at him.

“Be still, child,” Kain says, harsher than he intends. “Be-- _still. Raziel._ I am here, look at me.”

Raziel does, tapered ears flicking in response to the familiarity of Kain’s voice. Mercifully, Kain’s presence seems to soothe some of the fledgling’s panic, and slowly he turns his face, peering out at Kain through one _intensely_ golden eye.

“...Kain?” Raziel’s voice, hoarse from disuse but still beautiful after the long weeks Kain spent without it, sounds desperately relieved. A moment later Raziel is pushing himself upright, pressing a palm to his forehead as though dizzy. “...I did not think our kind would be susceptible to nightmares. We-- mmf.” He cuts himself off with a look of alarm, clasping a hand over his mouth. Kain makes an aborted attempt to reach out to him, but Raziel moves before he can, leaning forward and spitting out a mouthful of blood into his cupped palm.

“Good _god,”_ Kain says before he can stop himself.

“It’s-- Fine,” Raziel manages, brow pinching into a deep frown. “It’s not from inside me. My-- My mouth, it’s…” He trails off, reaching up with his unbloodied hand and hooking a finger beneath the left side of his lip. He pulls it up slightly and Kain can see a long, glinting white fang extending down where once a simple canine had been.

“Oh,” Kain breathes, leaning forward with interest. “Did you cut your tongue, little one?”

“Mm,” Raziel says, wincing. “It’s gotten difficult to speak.” He makes a low sound of irritation deep in his throat. “Which is incredibly frustrating when you think of how long it took for me to regain coherency.” He stares down at the blood in his palm. “My head feels like it’s been trampled by horses. Is this normal?”

“Somewhat,” Kain offers, relieved beyond words to have Raziel returned to him, though he is now a Raziel finally fully augmented by Kain’s dark gifts. His eyes, though now a startling amber in place of their previous icy blue, are no less familiar after their change in hue, and somehow make Raziel’s angular features all the more striking, like those of a wildcat, a predator. The fangs will make hunting far easier, too, and it seems that Raziel has finally reached the vampiric maturity Kain was waiting for. “You must be starving.”

“I… Yes,” Raziel agrees, nodding fervently. “Yes, now that you mention it, it’s actually incredibly painful.”

“A moment.” Kain stands at once, fetching the nearest pitcher to hand, already filled with the blood of his latest prey, supply having been replenished multiple times as the previous content grew stale the longer Raziel spent unconscious. He considers pouring a cup for Raziel to drink from, but in his current weakened and starving state, he’s likely to finish off the entire pitcher without pausing, so Kain simply brings the full pitcher over and holds it steady while Raziel tilts his face up eagerly to receive it.

Kain’s estimation was correct and Raziel drains the entire pitcher without a single breath in between swallows. Kain discards the empty pitcher and fetches a second, which Raziel drains just as eagerly as the first. That second pitcher, however, seems to take much of the edge off of Raziel’s hunger, and his expression relaxes considerably from its twisted tense state into something more satisfied. Kain wipes his bloody hand clean with a rag and sits on the edge of the bed, regarding his changed fledgling with no small amount of intrigue.

“How do you feel?” He asks while Raziel prods curiously at his new teeth.

“Strange,” Raziel says, thoughtful. He pricks his finger on the point of his fang like an idiot and gives a startled hiss that serves to shock him and amuse Kain in equal measure. “Like my body isn’t fully mine yet. I don’t even recall feeling this disoriented when you revived me. Then, it was like my body already knew what my mind did not, that you were my master and that as long as you were nearby, I was safe. Now, it’s like my body and my mind are warring with each other, each with their own ideas of how to exist and they are in direct opposition. Also,” he grimaces, “everything is very loud.”

“This will be the first change of many,” Kain tells him somewhat apologetically. “Our kind do not evolve as humans do, over millennia and countless generations. We change as the centuries shift and even the oldest of our race was still transforming up until his execution. Each change will bring new gifts, and I can only vaguely advise because the first of my changes happened long ago and I cannot fully recall what each change brought with it. If my recollections are correct, I believe the next will probably give you claws, but at least your fangs have finally come in.”

“Yes,” Raziel muses, a faraway look entering his eyes. “I did wonder when they might. They are the signature of our kind, aren’t they? I was rather envious that I didn’t yet have them, but now that I do, I find them highly irritating.”

“You’ll adjust in no time I’m sure,” Kain soothes. “But for now I think a bath and a hunt will do you a world of good. You should also admire your reflection, when you get the chance. Your eyes have changed, too.”

“Oh?” Raziel lifts a hand to his cheek, brushing his fingertips over the skin below his right eye. “How so?”

“Gold,” Kain tells him and Raziel looks immensely pleased about that, vain little thing that he is. “You look like a true vampire now.”

“Good,” Raziel says, viciously jubilant. “Let the humans witness us and despair.”

“All in good time,” Kain says, ruffling Raziel’s hair out of affectionate habit. Raziel smiles crookedly and a low, rumbling sound reverberates from deep within his chest that causes them both to fall still.

“Well, well,” Kain says with great amusement, while Raziel looks deeply mortified. “The kitten grew fangs and learned how to purr.”

“Don’t _call me that!”_ Raziel exclaims, covering his face with his hands. “I couldn’t help it, it just happened!”

“Oh, don’t fuss,” Kain chides mildly. “It is but one of a thousand sounds you’ll now find yourself able to make. Hissing when startled, for instance, and a deep growl to warn your enemies that a swift death approaches. It’s merely another way for us to express ourselves. No longer are we limited by human expressions. We are better in _all_ ways, never forget that.”

“I won’t,” Raziel murmurs, lowering his hands from his face. “Is it late enough to hunt, yet?”

Kain glances at the shutters and the slivers of darkness in view between the wooden slats. “It is the perfect hour for a hunt,” he declares with relish. “Come. Let’s show the world that you have taken your rightful place at my side.”

Raziel’s answering grin is full of beautiful, feral promise. “Let’s.”

* * *

Raziel, fresh from his first evolution, is now fully capable and even adept at keeping up with Kain on the hunt. There is no trace of his former hesitancy, and each of his kills are now as precise and deadly as the vampire himself. Not a drop of blood is spilt or wasted and he moves like a shadow, unseen until the final, deadly strike, and watching him hunt is like watching a masterpiece come to life, pure artistry in motion. More often than not, Kain will hang back to watch Raziel kill with a deep sense of satisfaction, bordering on awe, and that is how Kain knows he has chosen perfectly for his conquest of Nosgoth.

Raziel’s loyalty is unswerving, and now that he has the skills and the innate talent to reinforce his actions, he is a constant, stalwart presence at Kain’s side, though he does not follow orders blindly. He is sharp and tenacious, qualities Kain had seen in him even before he could fully articulate himself or deal a swift death to his prey, but they have been amplified now that he has settled fully into his vampiric body. He is still ravenously curious, with a keen love of challenges and puzzle and quickly grows board if his interest is not held, so while they travel Nosgoth together, Kain plans and schemes and knows that, when the time comes, Raziel will be as deadly in command of his army as he is when they hunt together in the dark.

Kain was not expecting this shift in their dynamic when Raziel first awoke from his change, but he is deeply pleased with the end result, more so now that he knows each subsequent change will only serve to transform his firstborn into the purest and deadliest of predators loyal in Kain’s service. But even more unexpectedly, though Raziel’s eloquence has only improved since his evolution, it is not his words that transmit his intentions, though he speaks his mind without fail, either direct or diplomatic as the situation requires. It is his secondary matter of expression that reaches Kain and the unspoken words are unambiguous.

When they hunt and the thrill of it sings in their blood and Raziel is alight with the pleasure of a kill, his blazing eyes will unerringly seek Kain out in the darkness and the burst of a subvocal purr will spear Kain almost more completely than Raziel’s intense gaze ever could. Kain has not indicated that Raziel’s desires have been noticed, primarily because Kain is accustomed to such attentions, and he has decided not to push the matter for the moment.

It does not stop him from responding in kind, however, purely for the private rush of satisfaction he gets when he sees Raziel respond without fail.

It becomes a game, of sorts. One that Raziel doesn’t know he is playing, and that makes it all the more interesting. The first time Raziel presents Kain with a fresh kill in deference, Kain brushes gentle claws featherlight across Raziel’s cheek and lets loose a low, satisfied growl that has Raziel unconsciously baring his throat. The sight of it heats something long dormant in Kain’s blood, and it doesn’t so much become all he can think about, as it becomes something that rarely leaves his mind to begin with. No matter what matters are currently demanding Kain’s attention, Raziel is always there, terrifyingly beautiful and hauntingly seductive.

For now, Kain bides his time. They have an empire to raise. Everything else will follow as it should.


	2. Chapter 2

Raziel has been fully apprised of Kain’s intention to sire more fledglings and though he’s not entirely happy about the prospect, he knows it will be a necessity if they are to subjugate Nosgoth according to Kain’s whims. Raziel, for all that he is a logical and highly intelligent creature, is also susceptible to the concept of jealousy, like any other blooded beast. Kain finds it incredibly amusing; the moue of displeasure that twists his firstborn’s face when he announces his intentions to recruit another for their cause, but Raziel is nothing if not logical, and puts aside the feelings he will not elaborate to Kain and resigns himself to the inevitability of a new fledgling.

Though Raziel is aware that Kain intends to sire another, he does not know when, and Kain is intensely frustrated by long periods of inaction, being unable as it currently stands to do much else from their meagre farmhouse except talk about plans in the abstract. Thus, Kain’s decision to raise the second of his vampire sons comes on the back of the undeniable fact that he cannot move forward in his conquest of Nosgoth without them. He knows now that, had he shared the full breadth of his plans with Raziel, his firstborn would have been able to solve the problem for him, being in possession of a singularly sharp mind that Kain is not too proud to admit to himself that he cannot match. They can battle with wills and wits handily, but Raziel favours mental challenges almost as highly as he relishes a hunt, and he possesses a particular power of logic and reasoning that even Kain cannot follow.

But the inactivity grates on Kain’s nerves something fierce, so he acts without affording the situation much thought and disappears from the farmhouse with nothing more than a vague promise to Raziel that he will be back soon, and returns to the tomb of the Sarafan alone. It will be the longest he has left Raziel’s company in a year, and he anticipates a storm from his firstborn when he returns a handful of weeks later with a new fledgling in tow.

It happens much the same as it had with Raziel, and this time Kain knows what to expect, though he’s not nearly as generous this time around with how much of his soul he siphons off to give to his second son. As it stands, the second time Kain raises a fledgling, it is a lot easier in its entirety, and he’s struck by how close Raziel’s remaking had been to turning into an unmitigated disaster, given Kain’s inexperience. He’s incredibly fortunate that it did not and that Raziel is everything he could have wanted in a firstborn and more. It is unfair to expect the same of Turel, especially when Kain has not given as much of himself to the second son as the first, but Kain cannot help that Raziel has effortlessly surpassed his own expectations, and Turel will just have to suffer from it, for Kain will not lower his expectations for anyone.

Turel may not have Raziel’s keen wit or deadly precision but he is _strong_ , even as a fledgling, and it takes both Kain and Raziel’s combined efforts to keep him contained when he attempts to ravage the countryside in his crazed, newborn haze of bloodlust. Efforts that Raziel is absolutely furious about offering, whether because he is jealous or because he has not yet forgiven Kain for disappearing for two months without so much as an explanation. It matters little, for Kain will act as he pleases and is beholden to no one, least of all an opinionated _infant_ of a vampire, but he cannot deny that having Raziel furious with him is not a pleasant experience.

“You should have said something,” Raziel rages when Kain drags the dazed and bloody fledgling through the cottage door by the scruff of his neck. “You should have told me you were going to go haring off on some ill-conceived _jaunt_ to sire another fledgling, because _then_ I could have told you _exactly_ how stupid the idea was.”

Reasonably, Kain is perfectly aware that Raziel is correct and that their current homestead is not suitable for two full-grown vampires and a fledgling, that they do not have the space nor the means to help Turel’s vampiric recuperation along with anything approaching ease. Kain is aware that Raziel’s anger is not entirely unfounded, but Kain is _not_ favourable towards the notion of having a youngling telling him what to do.

It is the first time Kain lashes out at Raziel, gouging four deep claw marks into his firstborn’s chest and leaving a savage imprint of his teeth on the back of Raziel’s neck. Raziel is not so much cowed by Kain’s violent act as he is shocked completely silent by it, and Kain is equally shocked by the sheer depth of the guilt that rises up in him when Raziel clutches his chest and stares at Kain as though he doesn’t recognise the vampire standing before him.

They don’t speak for a fortnight after that, which is for the best, though once his wounds have healed Raziel does help tend to Turel as best he can. Kain is neither accustomed nor inclined toward apologies and Raziel knows this, so the best thing for both of them to do is to avoid each other until their respective tempers have cooled.

While Raziel avoids him, Kain turns his attentions to his secondborn. Turel, while he does not display anything close to Raziel’s level of intellect, is a formidable creature and Kain is savagely proud of his new son regardless of his inability to reach the standard Kain holds Raziel to, but he will undoubtedly serve the purposes Kain is already planning for the rest of his vampiric sons once they are risen.

It takes six months for Turel to achieve full coherency, and another two for him to achieve the self-control Kain expects of him so that he can leave the fledgling unattended for longer than a handful of hours. It does mean that his and Raziel’s temporary homestead will soon no longer serve its purpose as sufficient housing, which means Kain must find a new home for the rest of the sons he will raise. Ideally, Kain would seize some form of stronghold from the humans to suit his purposes and to house the growing might of his blossoming army, but even three vampires can be overwhelmed by human warriors if unprepared, and while Moebius’ cutthroats no longer haunt Nosgoth in pursuit of the vampire threat they believed they had eradicated, humans pose a formidable threat when assembled. It’s their only redeeming quality.

He presents the quandary anew to Raziel when the worst of his firstborn’s ire has abated and they have moved on from tense indifference enough to converse properly again, and is satisfied when the presentation of a puzzle helps to wipe away the vestiges of Raziel’s anger. Kain does not know how to communicate to Raziel that he regrets inflicting harm, is certain that simple words will not suffice and is not prepared to attempt to offer platitudes because it does not suit him, so he simply presents Raziel with a new book to add to his slowly-growing collection, and they don’t speak of the incident again.

While Kain teaches Turel the art of hunting, Raziel devotes most of his time to pouring over whatever maps they’ve been able to get their hands on, making long lists of possible locations they might be able to co-opt for their cause. It’s tedious, boring work, the kind Kain has no patience for in the slightest, so he’s more than happy to let Raziel take the lead on their relocation. Raziel, who isn’t happy about having to leave their… _rustic_ little cottage, gets a peculiar kind of wistful look in his eye whenever the topic is broached, but for all Kain’s needling, Raziel will not bend and give voice to whatever thoughts have him preoccupied.

“It matters little,” is all Raziel offers when Kain presses for the fifth and final time, throwing a dark glare towards the dozing Turel. “Am I not allowed my private thoughts? I will be sad to leave, that’s all, but you’ve prematurely forced our hands.”

Kain considers reprimanding Raziel for that disrespectful remark, but the memory of his firstborn’s skin parting beneath his claws makes him reconsider. He gives up on attempting to get Raziel to voice his concerns after that. There’s no getting anything out of Raziel when he gets like this, reticent and introspective. He’s almost as stubborn as Vorador used to be, and that thought is almost amusing - would be if Raziel’s dour mood didn’t permeate every inch of the farmhouse like a dark cloud threatening heavy rainfall - because they would definitely not have gotten on The thought is still mildly amusing when it strikes, because Kain knows that for all Raziel can orate like a skilled politician and there’s likely not a soul in Nosgoth he couldn’t charm, he would have gotten right on Vorador’s nerves and the elder would have given him a vicious hiding before too long.

Not that Kain would have let him.

Four days and several maps later, Raziel gives a furious hiss that draws both Kain and Turel’s attention, the latter more because he’s incredibly bored and the sound of Raziel’s irritation will probably yield something more interesting than the book he is attempting to read.

“This is impossible,” Raziel snaps from the table, leaning back in his chair and dragging hands down his face. Kain glances down at the map Raziel has annotated to death with notes and the like, almost completely obscuring the topography beneath. “Is there nowhere you can think of that would be acceptable for us to use in the meantime? We could secure a stronghold in time, but not with just the two of us. And we have neither the resources nor the manpower to build a place of our own. Not yet, anyway.”

“You’ve spent how long agonizing over this?” Kain asks, brows raising. “Just to admit defeat now?”

“It’s not defeat,” Raziel counters, bristling predictably. “I’m being _practical_. The issue is that we are hoping for a stronghold to reveal itself to us that already suits our needs. There are plenty, but they are strongholds for a _reason_. They are _built_ to be impenetrable. Three vampires - a fledgling and one who is barely _more_ than a fledgling - will not be able to secure one easily.”

“Can fight,” Turel insists, perking up considerably. “No doubt.”

“I don’t doubt you, Turel,” Raziel says patiently. “But you’ve not reached full maturity yet. Even I would struggle to subdue a hundred armed and trained humans. Once you’ve matured, you may well be able to do so, but attempting it _now_ would promise a painful death for any one of us.”

Turel bares his teeth unhappily. “Can fight,” he mutters again and is ignored by Kain and Raziel both.

“We’d need a central location,” Raziel continues, beckoning Kain over to the map he has been working from for the past few days. Turel hasn’t even the slightest inclination toward involving himself in the proceedings, having no desire to strategise, and returns to lounging across his bedroll with the book that he isn’t so much reading as he is regarding with intense distaste. It is Raziel’s favourite book, the one Kain had gifted to him when they stole into Coorhagen’s library over a year ago now, and Raziel is vibrating with the poorly-suppressed urge to wrench it out of his new brother’s hands. Unfortunately, there is not much else to hand they can use to occupy a newborn like Turel while he adjusts and Kain finds himself somewhat impatient for the fledgling to enter his evolutionary slumber so that Kain might find some damned _peace_.

“As you say,” Kain says wearily, tracing a claw thoughtfully over the map from Avernus to Termogent. “Somewhere defensible...”

Raziel makes a weary sound. “I think the issue is that we are hoping for a stronghold to reveal itself to us that already suits our needs. No human stronghold will suffice for your purposes, therefore I think it is safe to assume we will have to create a suitable bastion of our own.”

“We’ve neither the resources nor the manpower necessary,” Kain points out, partly to be rational and partly because presenting Raziel with problems just to watch him handily solve them has become a favoured pastime of Kain’s. This is the first proper interaction they’ve had since Turel’s rebirth and the argument that devolved into a vicious surge of teeth and claws and Kain is not keen on revisiting that incident if he can help it. As long as he can keep Raziel occupied with intricate dilemmas, they will know peace.

Instead of chastising his indolent secondborn, Kain considers the map. “We seem to have gotten ourselves caught in a neat little puzzle,” he says after a moment and Raziel snorts inelegantly. “We cannot secure a suitable location for ourselves without increasing our numbers, and we cannot increase our numbers until we have a suitable location.”

Raziel throws another pointed glance at Turel. “I am _hoping_ you’ve no immediate plans to crowd our living space further.”

“Not for the moment, Kain says mildly and Raziel rolls his eyes. Disrespectful little whelp. “Four days and you’ve made no headway with this? I’m disappointed, little one.”

“I’ve not been idle,” Raziel says irritably. “I’ve considered multiple options and it seems that our best bet is to operate beneath the human’s notice and I mean that literally.” He leans forward, leafing through the pile of papers they’ve accumulated to aid their cause. There is likely not a library in Nosgoth Raziel hasn’t stolen _something_ from, but despite the sheer quantity of maps and city planning dockets he’s pilfered, he finds what he’s looking for without much difficulty, spreading it out over the table.

“Meridian?” Kain asks, leaning over it with some interest.

“As distasteful as it may be, there is an intricate network of tunnels beneath the city,” Raziel says, tracing the spider web lines extending below the layout of the city with the tip of a finger. “It would only need to be for a short while, until your new fledglings are mature, then we could take a stronghold from the humans with little difficulty.”

“I’m not raising my empire from the _literal_ bowels of a city, Raziel,” Kain says darkly, face twisting in distaste. “I don’t care how you spin it, I’ll not stoop so low.”

“Be reasonable,” Raziel implores, slamming a palm down onto the map and startling Turel into dropping his book. “We cannot move forward without a plan, and so far you’ve shot down every other possibility I’ve put toward you. Do _you_ have an answer to our problem, or are you just going to keep disagreeing with me on principle?”

“Hold your tongue,” Kain warns, knowing full well Raziel will do nothing of the sort and lacking the inclination to force him to do so. “And I might have just the solution we’re looking for.”

“You are _unbelievable_ ,” Raziel snaps, temper flaring. “So you just wanted to watch me suffer while I tried to solve _your_ problem? Is that it? Were you planning to wait until I started ripping my hair out in frustration before you told me you had an answer this whole time?”

Abruptly, Kain snarls at him, short and sharp, meant as a warning rather than a prelude to actual violence. Raziel does not possess the kind of personality that can be tempered and guided by viciousness as Kain has learned, and he does not respond well to the kind of beatings Kain’s father would have once visited upon their disobedient hunting dogs. Still, the growl serves its purpose, and Raziel defers at once, baring his throat in instinctive submission.

“I said _might_ ,” Kain continues, otherwise ignoring Raziel’s irritated interruption. “I don’t know what has become of the place in all these years, if it’s still standing or unoccupied, but it’s something.”

“Something is still something,” Raziel says, interested now that Kain has supplied a small but tangible option; a potential solution to their problem. And now that Kain thinks about it, he cannot understand how it didn’t occur to him sooner. “Where is it? _What_ is it? A fortress?”

“Not quite.” Kain rolls up the map of Meridian and passes it off to Raziel, revealing the map Raziel has been working on solidly for the past four days. He scratches a rough circle around Termogent with the tip of a claw and Raziel leans forward with interest. “There is an old dwelling in the heart of the forest. It belonged to the vampire Vorador and, if it _is_ still abandoned, then it will be large enough for us to work from until we have enough might to strike the first crippling blow against the humans.”

“Then we go,” Raziel says at once, fire sparking in his eyes. “We find out if it is serviceable and take it for our own if it is. You said Vorador despised the humans. I should think he would be viciously proud to know his old homestead is being utilised in the preparations for their subjugation.”

“Partly,” Kain allows, a faint smile curling his lips. “But the old bastard could be very particular when he wanted to be. He’d be pleased to know we’re working to cull the human cattle, but he’d be furious about strangers walking the halls of his home. And even angrier to know _I_ was the one to let them in.”

“We’re dangerously low on options,” Raziel points out. “So fussing about the particularities of the dead isn’t a luxury we can afford. Offer apologies to his memory if you must, but let us do _something_.”

Raziel is right, of course. And Kain is not the type to concern himself with the feelings of the living, let alone the dead. But he cannot help but think of Vorador’s reaction to the knowledge that Kain is planning on repurposing his old mansion into what will effectively serve as a nursery for Kain’s fledglings. But as Raziel says, the opinions of the dead matter little and if they don’t act, then Kain’s desire to rule Nosgoth will never become more than a distant fantasy.

“Very well,” Kain says after some deliberation. “Once Turel has learned to control his bloodlust, we will investigate and see what has become of my old friend’s abode. With any luck, we’ll find more than ruins waiting for us.”

Raziel nods and clears away the rest of his maps, immensely pleased to finally have a plan to work from, even if they must wait until Turel can control himself before they act. Kain, in turn, is satisfied with Raziel’s brightened mood, and is confident the ensuing weeks will be less fraught with tension as they have been.

No such luck unfortunately.

* * *

It should not come as a surprise that once Turel regains his coherency, he and Raziel butt heads on practically every issue they discuss, but Kain had been hoping that Raziel, being older and possessing a keener intellect than his younger brother, would have the patience necessary not to rise to the bait. Unfortunately Turel is quick to act and will default to brute force in nearly every circumstance, where his elder brother prefers to rely on thought before action and from these diametrically opposed personalities, friction frequently sparks tempers.

Neither of them are indolent - Kain would not abide it if they were - and it would be disingenuous to name Raziel inactive just because he favours strategy above simply charging forth. As Kain knows well, once incensed, Raziel’s anger burns _bright_ and Turel does little to avoid fanning the flames of Raziel’s ire. Worse, Turel challenges Raziel’s opinions at every turn, despite lacking the intellect to effectively counter his elder brother’s arguments, and Kain does little to mitigate these altercations before they can get out of hand, preferring instead to watch Raziel beat his younger brother handily into submission when he transgresses past the point Raziel’s considerable patience will permit.

It never serves to knock Turel down for long, and neither does it impart a lasting lesson on not antagonising his brother, for each defeat Turel suffers at Raziel’s hands only serves to make him more desperate to win the next time they come to blows, which is far more frequently than Kain would like.

Kain would not care overmuch about these particular conflicts when they arise, because vampiric wounds heal and whenever Raziel and Turel clash, there is always a welcome stretch of peace directly after the initial explosion when Turel retreats to lick his wounds in private and Raziel forces himself back into his customary calm demeanour. That works for a time, but after the tenth or so altercation that results when Turel ridicules Raziel’s strategy, Raziel nearly severs Turel’s head from his shoulders and departs the cottage in a rage while his younger brother is still bleeding on the floor. He does not return for a week and Kain ensures that Turel understands the weight of the havoc he has wrought with his foolish tongue, and the wounds Kain inflicts take twice as long to heal as Raziel’s do.

When Raziel does, blessedly, return he won’t speak a word about where he has been, not even privately to Kain, who is at first stunned by his firstborn’s resolute silence, equally by his uncharacteristic recalcitrance and by the fatigued state in which Raziel returns to him. Since Raziel’s vampiric resurrection, the longest he has left Kain’s side of his own volition has been an hour or too at most simply to hunt alone or venture out to the nearby village when he wants a new book and has not the time to visit the library as they used to when it was just the two of them. Privately, Kain worries for Raziel and the state in which he returns, but the next day his firstborn is himself again, though he still won’t divulge to Kain where he has been.

Distressingly, this becomes a habit, for Turel will not leave well enough alone and antagonises Raziel as though he were born to do so. Kain would call it sibling rivalry, were he not convinced Turel would kill Raziel if given half the chance and if he did not fear Kain’s inevitable and terrible reprisal. But each ensuing time they fight, Raziel takes it as an excuse to disappear again for days and no matter how closely Kain tries to follow, Raziel is gone before he can pick up his trail, trained by Kain himself to be undetectable when he wants to be.

Kain beats Turel so handily the fifth time it happens that the fledgling is forced to enter his evolutionary torpor prematurely to recover. Kain does not feel so much as a twinge of guilt, for this time Raziel does not return until a fortnight has passed and Kain has taken his smoldering anger out on an entire village in the absence of Turel’s foolhardy presence.

Mercifully, though, Raziel does return, and when he steps over the threshold, dirty and exhausted, Kain very nearly attacks him on principle, so furious is he for his firstborn’s abandonment. Or he would have - he would have - had Raziel not returned and taken one look at Turel’s unconscious body and softened with thinly-veiled relief.

“I’m glad I didn’t kill him,” Raziel says with a smile, unfastening his cloak from about his shoulders. “I would have felt immeasurably guilty for impeding your plans by forcing you to create another fledgling.”

Kain does not respond to the poor attempt at humour. He toys with the idea of expressing his displeasure at Raziel’s far-too-frequent disappearances rather viciously, but the idea leaves almost as quickly as it comes. He does not want to hurt Raziel, still privately bears the guilt of the first and only time he has done so, and that is the only reason he holds his anger in check.

“You’re displeased,” Raziel says, regarding Kain warily.

“Your powers of observation are unparalleled,” Kain spits through gritted teeth. “How many times am I meant to permit your childish flights before you do something incredibly stupid and get yourself killed before you can return to me? Is it so impossible for you to hold your temper in check? _Why_ do you let Turel’s words incense you so? Have you no sense, child?”

Raziel inclines his head, accepting the admonishment with uncustomary ease. “I dislike him,” is the simple response, accompanied by the shrug of one shoulder. “And I miss how things used to be. Would you like to know where I’ve been going?”

“Enlighten me.”

Raziel pulls a chair out from the table, sitting down and folding his hands together on top. “I’ve been making the journey to Coorhagen.”

That pulls Kain up short, momentarily cooling his smouldering temper. “Coorhagen? Why in god’s name would you go there?”

“The library,” Raziel murmurs with a sad smile that has no business marring such a beautiful face. “It is possibly the fondest memory of my new life. That may not count for much, as I don’t recall any tangible fond memories of my former life, and all that I can recall comes to me as indecipherable nightmares. But my mind strays to those precious months when it was just the two of us, private and peaceful, spending countless hours reading quietly in the dark.” Raziel sighs heavily. “It won’t ever be that way again and part of me is glad of it at the same time it saddens me. I cannot explain it.”

“So each time Turel infuriated you…”

Raziel nods. “I went to the library. I can pass among the humans unnoticed as long as I don’t bare my teeth, so it matters not if they see me enter. But when I need to calm myself, the library is my haven.”

Kain does not understand it, having had no safe haven of his own in life or unlife. Any comfort he felt he needed, he took for himself from what was immediately to hand, be it intimate company or drink, it mattered little. But he cannot begrudge Raziel something so simple, and is wholly unprepared for the rush of feeling it evokes within him.

“I don’t want to tell you not to go,” Kain says with some reluctance, “but I dislike it when you leave without a word.”

“I’ll not do it again,” Raziel assures him, “if you can promise me something in return?” He looks _hopeful_ , which is not an expression Kain has seen on him before, and he finds he likes the way it brightens Raziel’s eyes.

“If it isn’t unreasonable I’ll consider it,” is the extent of the admission Kain is willing to offer.

Raziel grins. “When we conquer Nosgoth, gift me a library? That I might have a haven of my own?”

Kain laughs. “Such a simple request? You don’t want land of your own? An army? Surely territories and power are the more desirable gifts?”

Raziel shakes his head. “I don’t want any of it,” he says. “I’ll be content with whatever you see fit to give, once Nosgoth belongs to you, but this is the only thing I will ask of you for myself.”

“Then you shall have it,” Kain promises. “How could I not promise something so simple, if it will bring you happiness?”

Raziel’s entire countenance seems to brighten. Kain has not seen a true sunrise in centuries, but the smile that spreads across Raziel’s face in response to his easy promise may be the closest he will ever come again. It more than suffices, in the absence of sunlight.

“Thank you,” Raziel murmurs, radiantly pleased. “Will you hunt with me tonight?”

“I will, little one. I will.”

* * *

Somehow, Turel’s evolution seems to temper some of his fledgling fire and when he wakes, starved and disoriented, Raziel is there as Kain had been for him, with soothing words and blood to offer in Kain’s place because he had asked to be the one to do this for his younger brother.

Kain recognises as it happens that it is not kindness that moves Raziel to be the one to tend to Turel when he awoke, but a calculated gambit that, if successful, would serve to quell Turel’s misplaced rage towards his older brother. Kain looks on, impressed at Raziel’s clever manipulation, as he helps Turel quench his thirst by holding the pitcher in a mockery of the way Kain had for his firstborn. He watches as Raziel helps Turel to his feet, all the while murmuring with cultivated sweetness and reassurance that he is doing so well, that it’s going to be alright, that Turel is stronger now and that no one can stand against the renewed might of his fully-fledged, vampiric prowess.

Turel laps it up eagerly and from then on when he looks at Raziel, it is always with a sense of begrudging respect and none of his previous unfounded rage. They may never see eye to eye, but Raziel’s manipulation has at least won him enough of a respected standing in his brother’s eyes to ensure that Turel will not overstep his place as often.

And Kain is _proud_. Proud of Raziel’s intelligent manipulations, proud of Turel’s fierce strength and the combined might of his burgeoning brood, and the first time Raziel and Turel hunt together, they return to the farmhouse in high spirits, laughing together in the kind of camaraderie Kain knows will serve to deepen their tenuous bond into something lasting.

Now that Turel has gained control over his newborn bloodborne fervour, they are finally in a position to investigate what has become of Vorador’s mansion. They won’t need much for the journey and can hunt on the way, so once Kain decides it is time to leave, they are ready to depart just as dusk begins to darken the sky. All three of them are impatient to reach their destination before the week’s end and while Termogent is little more than a three-day journey, they have the sun to contend with, which would mean their otherwise brisk journey would take just under a week if they didn’t take precautions. Sunlight, while harmful, can be overcome with simple ingenuity.

“Why _does_ the sun hurt us?” Turel asks as Raziel helps to bind cloth strips around his forearms. It’s a simple workaround, but an effective one, even if it does hinder movement somewhat. Raziel pauses momentarily in his work, glancing towards Kain as though he can provide enlightenment on the matter.

“I don’t think even the wisest of our race knew the true reason,” Kain says, testing the give of his own bindings. Satisfied that they will hold, he moves over to assist Raziel in wrapping the last of Turel’s bandages. “But all you need to know is that if you aren’t careful it will kill you. Sunlight and water are the only enemies we cannot fight. But sunlight is an enemy we _can_ guard against, at least.”

Turel frowns, tugging at the bandages just as Raziel is trying to fasten them, and receives a slapped hand for his troubles. “But surely there’s a _reason_ it hurts us? I don’t like having an enemy I can’t fight.”

Raziel laughs. “Then content yourself with the fact that our untouchable enemy proves ineffectual against the weakest of armor. And _don’t_ fidget with the wrappings while we travel or you’ll burn to ash before we can fix them.”

“I still don’t like it,” Turel mutters, but he tugs his cloak on without further complaint.

They make a strange group, bound and cloaked and covered head to toe to guard against the sunlight when it rises with the dawn, but hopefully to any passing travellers they meet, the bandages will ensure they are mistaken for lepers and they will be largely ignored.If anyone looks too closely, Kain is confident he will be able to Charm their way out of any trouble at best and at worst, the three of them will be able to easily dispatch would-be-attackers without much difficulty. Still, Kain would rather avoid an altercation on the road if at all possible.

“I hope this place doesn’t turn out to be a waste of time,” Turel mutters as they leave the farmhouse behind. “I don’t want to go back to that pathetic little den if I can avoid it. How you spent so long there without burning it to the ground, I’ll never know. It reeks of humans and animal filth.”

“It served its purpose before _you_ came along,” Raziel snaps, bristling. “It’s done you no harm to have come from humble beginnings, _brother_.”

“Humble, hah!” Turel barks a mocking laugh. “I’m beginning to doubt your tastes, brother mine. Content to lead the life of a simple farmer, willing to skulk around in the sewers of a city like a rat. We are the Lords of the night, Raziel, not _vermin_. We should have quarters befitting of our status.”

Raziel rolls his eyes, hissing at Turel when he reaches over to tug on his cloak simply to annoy him. “What do you know of status?” He scoffs. “You might have been a farmhand in your human life. You have the build of a labourer. All muscle and no brains. Stop complaining, you sound like a brat.”

“I was a warrior, I know that much,” Turel boasts without shame. “My body recalls what my mind cannot and my hands long for the weight of a glaive.”

That pulls Raziel up short. “You remember?”

Turel scoffs. “Of course I do. It comes to me in fragments, but I know I had status. Perhaps not a warlord, but a warrior at least of some renown. My hands bear the memory of weapons they’ve handled, no matter that my body is new, for my soul is not. I remember a gilded stronghold and little else, but from what I _can_ recall, I know that I fought and I fought _well_.”

Kain listens with mild interest as Turel boasts of a life half-remembered. He is not going to divulge to his vampiric offspring their origins, less out of concern for their reactions and more because he does not care enough to do so. It could not matter less what lives they led before Kain raised them, and the fact that the vampires with him now had once been fanatical warrior-priests is little more than a deliciously blasphemous joke that Kain is content to enjoy in private.

“Perhaps you were not dead as long as I,” Raziel murmurs, sounding troubled. “I can remember almost nothing from my former life and what I _can_ remember troubles me greatly.”

That serves to pique Kain’s absent interest. “You’ve not spoken about your memories before, little one. What is it that troubles you?”

Raziel hesitates for a moment. “...I wonder if I too used to be some form of warrior,” he says, though he doesn’t look certain. “I can recall the image of stained glass and a sensation of peace, though when I try to focus on it, the memory warps like disturbed water. The rest of the memories come to me in nightmares and I can’t parse them no matter how hard I try. Blood, unholy screams, and then nothing but darkness and an overwhelming sense of defeat.”

“Sounds like you were just as overdramatic in life as you are in _un_ life, my brother,” Turel says with an abrasive laugh. Raziel bares his teeth and his body coils in preparation to strike but he is stayed by a quelling glance from Kain. “But what does it matter? Whatever bested you in life cannot touch you now. Content yourself with that.”

It’s quite possibly the wisest sentiment to come out of Turel’s mouth and it serves to placate Raziel somewhat and lets their little group lapse once more into easy silence, though unease and uncertainty seem to radiate from Kain’s firstborn in waves. Kain leaves him to whatever disquiet has him tangled up so thoroughly, knowing that Raziel will eventually puzzle it out himself and return to his usual composure soon enough.

They encounter no trouble on the roads, which Kain is thankful for, but he knows long before they reach the centre of Termogent forest that something is not quite right and that sensation of foreboding begins to creep down his spine as an icy chill. It has been centuries since Vorador once called Termogent home and Kain is suddenly very aware that, after all this time, they are far more likely to discover ruins than they are to happen across an empty abode ripe for the taking.

But that assumption is also incorrect.

Ruins yes, in that there is nothing left of Vorador’s once-decadent homestead, but it is not at all abandoned. Kain had thought - had hoped - that with the death of his old mentor, Moebius’ vampire hunters had passed into legend, being that their founder had also met his demise at Kain’s own hand. It stood to reason that, with no leadership and no prey upon which they could sate their own almost-vampiric bloodlust, the cutthroat band of petty mercenaries would dissolve, unneeded.

But just as Kain survived, so have his enemies.

They hear them before they see them; not long after sunrise a faint susurrus of voices can be heard, carried along on the wind, and Kain does not have to give word for his lieutenants to halt because they realise not long after Kain himself does that something is wrong. Raziel is off like an arrow from a bow, leaving Kain and Turel behind as he scales the nearest tree for a better look at what awaits them.

 _“Some sort of mercenary encampment,”_ Raziel whispers back to Kain, who curses under his breath and hauls Turel back by the hood of his cloak, shoving him down into the underbrush where they will not be seen by prying eyes. _“I don’t recognise their insignia... Two triangles, one above the other, touching points as though mirrored.”_

 _“Vampire hunters,”_ Kain whispers back through their connection and Raziel’s surprise is almost tangible. _“What of the mansion? Can you see it?”_

_“I’ll try to get closer, the trees are dense here. A moment.”_

_“Be cautious, little one.”_

“What’s going on?” Turel demands, frustration lacing his tone. “What’s Raziel doing?”

“Be still,” Kain snaps, tightening his grip on Turel’s neck enough that the youngling hisses in pain. “Vampire hunters. Raziel is scouting ahead.”

“Vampire hunters?” Turel exclaims, then flinches when Kain snarls at him. He continues, lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. “I thought the humans believed us extinct?”

“It seems our foes aren’t as foolish as they would have us believe,” Kain mutters. “Humans are never more formidable than they are when they’re united, Turel, never forget that. Even a dozen humans can prove unconquerable as long as they are _organised_. The worst thing a group of humans can have is a leader. Once united, they are almost impossible to tear down.”

“But they’re _human_ ,” Turel protests unhappily. “They’re weaker by far.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Kain snaps. “Can a swarm of bees not turn away a bear if it draws too close to their hive? So too can a handful of humans destroy a single one of us, if they are adequately prepared. We are the only three vampires in Nosgoth, child. If they destroy us, our bloodline ends. We _cannot_ be careless.”

 _“Kain,”_ Raziel’s whisper fades back into his awareness, drawing his attention at once. _“This isn’t good. By my count, there’s at least a hundred of the vermin, perhaps more inside the house. It still stands, though. There’s some structural damage, but from what I can see, the mansion is as whole as can be hoped for after so long. It seems to be a bastion of some sort.”_

 _”Return,”_ Kain bids him at once. _”There’s little we can do about this now. The place is still standing, but it matters little if we cannot access it.”_

There is a long stretch of silence and Kain would fear the worst if he could not feel Raziel’s presence still thrumming reassuringly within his own mind. _”Hold on,”_ Raziel whispers and Kain bristles at once. _”I want to see something.”_

 _“Raziel,”_ Kain cries inside his head, voice reverberating across their connection. _“Don’t be a fool, come back now. If they see you, they will kill you and I won’t be able to stop them.”_

_“I’ll not be seen,” Raziel says and then he is gone and Kain can do little more than snarl in impotent fury._

“What is it _now?”_ Turel demands and Kain suppresses the instinct to strangle him through sheer force of will.

“He’s gone to do something _stupid_ ,” Kain hisses, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Idiot child that he is. There’s nothing we can do for him, there’s at least a hundred of the rats swarming the place. Come, we’ll await him deeper in the forest. I don’t like being this close.”

Turel follows, albeit with a sense of reluctance upon leaving his brother behind that would be heartening if Kain wasn’t so ill at ease, being this close to humans with the ability to slaughter all of them without difficulty. “How long will we wait?”

“Until nightfall,” Kain says, grabbing Turel’s arm and wrenching him forward impatiently.

“And if he doesn’t return by then?”

“Then we leave without him.”

* * *

Raziel’s whisper does not reach out again and every minute spent waiting for _any_ word from him a dagger slipping between Kain’s ribs anew. Even Turel is anxious for his brother’s welfare, sitting with uncharacteristic stillness at Kain’s side in the shadow of an old yew, too nervous to fidget as he normally might. Kain, for his part, has not moved an inch in hours, forearms braced on bent knees and claws clasped in almost-prayer as they wait for a sign, _any_ sign, that Raziel is alive and will return to them.

The sky begins to darken and Turel glances fearfully at his master, waiting for the word that they are to depart as Kain swore they would. Kain does not give the word, does not move, until the moon hangs high in the sky and there is still no word from Raziel.

“Come,” he says, the first he has spoken since the morning, and Turel gets to his feet with a mournful sound.

“Do you think they made it quick?” Turel asks and only the fact that he sounds so aggrieved prevents Kain from striking him for his callous remark. “These hunters, I hope they aren’t the kind to torment their prey. I would be comforted to know Raziel went down fighting, rather than...” He trails off, head bowed.

“It is all we can hope for,” Kain murmurs, passing a hand over his face. “There is little we can do now. Let’s…” _Go home_ are the words he means to say but cannot. No matter how hard he tries to force the intention, he cannot make them come. Kain is not accustomed to grief, having felt it sparingly in both human and vampire life, but it lodges painfully inside his ribs now, hollow but immeasurably heavy.

Turel utters a low, mournful keen for his brother and turns to follow Kain as they return back to their home that will feel disgustingly empty now. How cruel that Kain should lose the best of a barely-formed brood, to a union of humans that should have died along with Vorador. It’s the cruellest twist of fate, that all of Kain’s endeavours seem either doomed to fail, or fated to harm him irreparably. Perhaps, somewhere, some iteration of that thrice-damned timestreamer still lives, determined to thwart Kain at every turn.

That is not a comforting thought.

Aggrieved, Kain beckons Turel to his side, preparing to make the long journey home all while attempting to ignore the absence of his best that has and will continue to plague him for god knows how long. Like an unhealed wound it will likely fester, and though Raziel has died a Sarafan martyr once before, his death this time will fan the flames of a rage that Kain will rain down upon the humans a hundredfold, until such a time he deems himself satisfied with the amount of bloodshed he will wreak in his firstborn’s name.

Perhaps that was Raziel’s lot. To die always as a martyr, in both his former life and the next.

Though those heavy thoughts are painful, Kain bears them because there is little else he can do. As much as he wants to storm Vorador’s old mansion and slaughter everyone inside, two vampires cannot best an organised company, especially not if they have spellcasters among their ranks. There is nothing to be done except return home and weather the blow the humans have unwittingly struck. They cannot act now, but Kain vows that, in time, he _will_ have his vengeance for the loss of his firstborn.

And then both Turel and Kain are nearly thrown to the dirt when an ungodly tremor shakes the very ground beneath them. Turel cries out, unbalanced entirely, and topples to the shaking ground in a tangle of limbs and splutters curses. Kain manages to stay upright by digging his claws into the trunk of the yew that had sheltered them from the light of the setting sun, but the shockwave that follows the explosion is what sends Kain tumbling to the ground after his fledgling.

“What in the hell was that?” Turel demands, wrenching his cloak off of his head. They turn in unison towards the mansion and Kain is moving before he can stop himself, wrenching Turel off the ground by the back of his shirt and dragging him along into a flat-out sprint.

Over the trees, ominous orange light bleeds out, trailed by smoke that thickens as they draw closer, choking the air with its smog. Kain covers his nose and mouth with the cowl of his cloak as they approach and when they break into the clearing that once served as the courtyard of Vorador’s dwelling, they are met with nothing but utter chaos.

The hunters are in utter disarray, throwing whatever water they have onto tents that are all alight and blazing. The explosion and resulting blaze have whipped them into a frenzy of panic and in their terror they have no mind to turn to the swamps for the water they need to douse the flames, so all they have are whatever meagre rations the company has stored while encamped here. It’s nowhere near enough to quell the ferocity of the flames and Kain watches - shielded by rubble - as the frantic humans, the ones not killed by the initial explosion, all scramble over each other in single-minded terror to escape the worst of the blaze.

The heat of the flames is immense and Kain cannot bear it for long, retreating back into the shade of the trees as far as he dares. Both he and Turel are unseen by the panicked, fleeing humans, and in a matter of moments, the once-overrun grounds of the mansion are empty of all life save for that vicious, hungry fire consuming everything in its path.

But once the hunters’ tents and banners have burned away, there is nothing left to feed the flames. It cannot consume stone and iron, and not enough foliage has grown over the ruined courtyard to feed it suitably. Had the humans noticed this in their panic, perhaps they would not have retreated so quickly. As it stands, they run as though the hounds of hell are snapping at their heels, and it is not long before the sounds of their terror fade into the night, unheard even by Kain’s keen ears.

The courtyard still blazes, will for a while yet, but the flames are contained, for now.

“Kain,” Turel says urgently, clutching his arm. “Do you think--”

“I do,” Kain breathes, taking a step towards the flames.

Through the billowing smoke, a shadowy figure emerges. He is soot-covered and dirty, but alive and relatively unharmed, if a little charred around the edges. Kain breathes a deep sigh of relief as Raziel edges around the flames, coughing heartily into the crook of his elbow.

“Raziel!” Turel cries in palpable relief and jubilation. He runs to his brother who stumbles just as he reaches him and is caught and steadied by Turel’s sure grip. “We thought you’d _died_.”

“Not quite,” Raziel manages with a weak grin. “Though the humans really should learn not to keep barrels of saltpeter where anyone can get to them.”

“That was a foolish thing you did, little one,” Kain says when Turel helps Raziel limp over to him, away from the worst of the fire’s heat. “You could have been killed.”

“Call it a calculated risk,” Raziel says, coughing again. “But it paid off, didn’t it? You have your stronghold now.”

“You mad bastard,” Turel laughs, clapping Raziel on the back hard enough to make him wince. “I can believe you caused an _explosion_ just to get the humans to leave.”

Raziel grins, wiping soot away from his face with his forearm. “I saw an opportunity and I took it. Although…” His smile thins into something strained. “Probably should have detonated it from a bit further away. I didn’t think…” His eyes roll back into his head and his body sags. It’s only thanks to Turel’s proximity that he’s able to catch Raziel before his unconscious body can hit the ground.

“Damned idiot,” Kain snaps as Turel bends to lift Raziel into his arms properly. “Come on, let’s find somewhere to rest while we wait for the flames to die down. I’ll give him hell when he wakes up.”

Turel is quick to obey, which is a mercy, and the forest is home to many, so it’s no hardship for them to find a suitable haven for the night. The flames have made the courtyard impassable for now, so until the fire burns itself out, there’s not much they can do to survey the inside. Most likely the mansion’s many rooms are still home to hunters that will likely have been drawn by the explosion, but the worst of their number are gone, and Kain is more than prepared to deal with the remnants of their company now that the majority have departed.

For now he will keep watch and wait for Raziel to heal. If he cards his claws through his firstborn’s soot-sullied hair while he slumbers, Turel is at least wise enough not to mention it.

* * *

Raziel is only unconscious for a handful of hours, but his forearms and chest have been badly burned, which will take a few more days yet to heal fully, a fact that he is not pleased about but it does rather serve him right for acting so foolishly, no matter how fortuitous the outcome. They find cover in the form of a modest, rocky overhang and Kain leaves Turel to watch over Raziel in its shadow while he surveys the wreckage of Vorador’s courtyard.

He is pleased to note that the flames have died down considerably and are now just burning sedately on the last of the cloth and wood from the hunters’ tents. He picks his way through the charred debris and fading fires, noting with a fierce sort of glee just how many bodies are littering the flagstones. Though Kain has no need for vengeance now that Raziel has been returned to him, it still cheers the darkest parts of him to see his old enemies destroyed.

There is no sign of the hunters that departed in the commotion, so it is likely they have retreated to the nearest village on the outskirts of the forest, and it will be a day or so yet until they attempt to return. Kain is confident that they can secure the mansion before the hunters make said attempt, but he will need to see the mansion’s interior before he can be truly certain.

While Turel minds Raziel, Kain ventures into the mansion through one of the upper balcony walkways, misting through the gated opening and picks his way through the rubble within towards the great hall. Though time has not dimmed his memory, the winding halls of Vorador’s domicile have always been a source of confusion, but the most heartening discovery is that all the rooms seem to be uninhabited, and in most cases largely whole and undamaged.

It will serve as a perfect base of operations, for a while. At least until Kain has the might necessary to seize another for the humans, or build his own.

The mansion is, however, not entirely devoid of life. Foxes and wild dogs have made dens beneath cracked pillars and fallen portraits, nesting within moth-eaten drapery. Kain does not bother with animals that naturally defer to him as a higher predator, but when he happens across a minor infestation of hunters in one of the dormitories in the upper levels, Kain slaughters them with an especially personal viciousness. His pound of flesh, for Raziel’s injuries.

He leaves one alive but concussed and drags it out and back to Raziel, to whom he offers the unconscious human. Turel he bids to go and hunt as he wishes and settles down while Raziel drains the hunter dry and tosses its corpse out for the wolves and the crows.

“Did you find anything of note?” Raziel asks once sated, stretching out like a cat on top of his cloak. Wordlessly, Kain unfastens his own from around his neck and drapes it over his firstborn to help stay the cold.

“Nothing particularly interesting,” Kain says, leaning back against the rocky wall. “Vorador’s choice in decoration did not change at all in his later years, he always was a lavish bastard. But most of the dwelling is serviceable enough. Though it may take a while to clear the worst of the rubble.”

Raziel yawns widely. “Have Turel crush it down, I’m sure it could be repurposed to help fortify the courtyard. We may have to ensnare some humans to help with the rebuilding. Perhaps it’s time to recruit more fledglings to your cause. That was always the plan, wasn’t it?”

“Quite so,” Kain murmurs, glancing over when Raziel starts wriggling under the cloak. “What are you doing, child? Settle down, you’ve not healed yet.”

“I’m uncomfortable,” Raziel grouses. “If the mansion is serviceable, why can’t we go inside?”

Kain suppresses a smile. “If you can stand up unaided, I’ll allow us to relocate once Turel is back.”

“Ah,” Raziel says sheepishly. “Well, perhaps in a few more hours? I think I’d topple right over if I tried it right now.”

Kain throws him a pointed glance, though Raziel cannot see it from his supine position. “And so we shall remain here until Turel can carry your sorry hide inside.” He reaches out, almost unthinkingly, laying a hand over the bump beneath the cloak that is Raziel’s leg. His firstborn makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, finally settling down into a comfortable position. “...That was a very foolish thing you did, child.”

Raziel’s response takes a moment. “I didn’t go in thinking I was going to raze the encampment to the ground,” he offers like that makes this any _better_. “I was merely trying to get an accurate estimate of their numbers. I had to duck into one of the alcoves to avoid detection, and that was when I saw their explosives. It was the perfect opportunity, I didn’t want to waste it.”

“You got _incredibly_ lucky,” Kain tells him, unable to stop the rush of anger that wells up but at least able to temper it so it doesn’t cause him to snap like he wants to. “We could have lost you and with you, the soul I sacrificed to bring you to life. Don’t squander the gift I’ve given you, child. Your life is not yours to throw away. It belongs to _me_ , don’t forget that.”

Raziel does not answer and Kain assumes it is because he has been successfully cowed by his words of admonishment. But then a gentle snore emanates from beneath Kain’s cloak and he sighs heavily, having gone unheeded because his foolish firstborn is too tired to keep himself awake and listen when he is being chastised. It matters not, Kain is still planning on bringing Raziel to task as soon as he’s well enough to bear the brunt of Kain’s irritation, but for now his firstborn may rest and recover and Kain will watch over him while he does, privately overjoyed to have him returned safe once more.

Turel returns shortly after Raziel lapses back into unconsciousness and the two of them bear the sleeping Raziel into the mansion so that he may rest and recover more comfortably.

* * *

Contrary to his earlier intentions, Kain does not chastise Raziel properly once he has recovered from the worst of his burns, mainly because he has little time and also because he simply does not have the desire. The pain of almost losing him is still fresh in his mind and even Turel seems to still feel the remnant of it, for he hunts daily and always brings Raziel a fresh kill on his return.

In the meantime, they clear the worst of the debris from within the mansion to the courtyard, once the flames have burnt themselves out and left little but ash behind. Turel enjoys himself immensely when Kain tasks him with breaking down the larger pieces into reusable rubble, and Kain is certain the sounds of his fledgling’s violent jubilation at having things to actively destroy helps to keep wanderers away from their new home.

Of course it will only be temporary; there is too much structural damage for Kain to feel entirely comfortable within the home, too many cracked ceilings that let sunlight in, and too much damage done to outer walls to make the place truly defensible. The only reason he’s willing to reside here for any length of time is because it is large and will serve as an acceptable hub for the raising of the rest of his lieutenants.

Kain settles on six, for his best and brightest, mainly because he does not think his fragmented soul can bear much more than that. Having siphoned off the largest portion to Raziel in his inexperience, Kain is not going to be able to give much else to the rest of the martyrs he intends to raise, not without detriment to his own self. He doesn’t much fancy finding out what happens to a soul that has been stretched too thin, and as far as he knows, there has never been a vampire like him before, so it’s not as though there are any writings he can defer to for enlightenment.

No, he will raise the six, and through them the rest of Kain’s army will be raised. And as distasteful as Kain had pronounced the idea, it seems that necessity really will force them to operate underground.

When Raziel’s strength returns proper, he is inevitably drawn to Vorador’s extensive libraries with a kind of glee Kain has not seen him bear for a while. He’s content to let Raziel wander as he pleases, because even though he is undoubtedly searching for books to take for his own, he is also lending his intellect to the matter of Kain’s subjugation of Nosgoth. He can often be found scribbling frantically on sheafs of parchment long into the day, surrounded by tomes in piles so high he’s almost completely obscured by them. When he does emerge, tired and ink-stained but satisfied, it is almost always with a new piece of the puzzle settled inside his mind.

“Sire your third,” Raziel suggests one morning before he retires, catching Kain before he can return to his own room for the day. “We can house them here for a time. You said you wanted six, so sire the rest of them while we hold this house as a bastion. Once they have all matured, it will be time to expand.”

Kain gives a hum of consideration. “It all falls back to being unable to move forward until we are adequately prepared, though. How will we take Nosgoth with only six of you?”

“I’m not saying we wage _one_ war and call it a success,” Raziel says. “It will take time to conquer Nosgoth in her entirety, but once you’ve raised the rest of us, then _we_ can sire our own.”

This piques Kain’s interest and he beckons Raziel to follow him into the chambers he has taken for his own. Raziel does not sit, too enthused to hold still for a moment, and begins pacing the room with an anxious sort of energy suffusing his limbs. “There are vaults beneath the house, I’ve seen blueprints and the entrances in the garden have been destroyed, revealing them-- They’re _everywhere_. We can dig into them, extend them for miles. We could create an unseen territory below ground, away from the sun, and by the time the humans come to know of us, it will be too late.”

He grins fiercely, spreading his arms wide. “If it turns out to be easy for us to turn humans, then we might not even have to wage a war at all. Raise all the sons you wish to, and once they are fully fledged we can take each city in little more than a single night. We can turn hundreds of humans at once and let them serve as expendable fodder for the humans’ inevitable and pitiful attempts at retaliation. It won’t take long for us to corral the rest after that. We could secure your empire in less than a century.”

Pretty words, indeed. Kain smiles indulgently. “I’m going to regret teaching you how to speak again, aren’t I? You’ve a talent for coating your words with honey. I find myself unable to resist the lure of them. You’d make an excellent politician, in another life.”

Raziel snorts. “Thank god this is the life I’ve been gifted, then. I’d die of boredom within a week otherwise. But you agree? Once you’ve raised a circle of your own, we can take Nosgoth from the humans before they even realise we exist.”

“I see the merit to your words, true,” Kain says. “But you forget yourself. There is no joy in hunting overly weak prey. Yes, we could decimate the human cattle with little effort, but there is no amusement in overpowering the unprepared. I want a war, Raziel. I want to raise my blade against the land that tried to subjugate me, that attempted to demand I give my life for it.”

Raziel considers this. “Then I think perhaps it’s time we let the humans know vampires walk the land once more.”

Kain smiles. “As always, child, you understand perfectly. I will give the word when it is time for us to move from the shadows.”


	3. Chapter 3

The hunters attempt to return.

It is not unexpected that they do, but surprising that only a handful make the journey to begin with. Kain had not thought much of their chances of surviving an onslaught if the hunters had returned in force with their spellcasters in tow, but luckily this is not the manner in which the hunters choose to return to the mansion.

No, the hunters return in groups, though that was likely not their original intention. Kain is rather confident in his assumption that the first detachment of hunters had been sent merely to survey the site of the fire and report back to whomever had sent them, once they had ascertained the level of damage done to the mansion. Kain isn’t surprised by this in the slightest, but he is surprised that it takes nearly a month for the first of the hunters to return.

Turel is practically _salivating_ at the prospect of a fight, and no amount of reasonable words will temper his bloodthirst. It’s gotten to the point that Kain is almost tempted to just unleash his second lieutenant upon the hunters’ ranks just to see what will happen, but he refrains. Barely.

The hunters send a small group at first, barely ten of them. A scouting detachment and nothing more. Turel begs to be allowed to meet them, bares his fangs with bloodthirsty eagerness. Kain, though he does not particularly want to, turns him down.

Instead, he sends Raziel.

Raziel, who, as his firstborn, deserves the first blood of Kain’s war. This is where it truly starts, for Raziel has been sent to test the strength of his fangs and his will, and if he is successful, will return to the mansion with a fledgling of his own. And also in recompense for the wounds he suffered when he drove the hunters out of their encampment.

Kain should never have doubted him. Less than an hour after Raziel departs to meet the hunters, he returns to the mansion with five disoriented fledglings following close behind.

“It would have been more,” Raziel says by way of apology, “but once the first few were turned, they had to sate their newfound bloodlust rather quickly, so the rest had to be sacrificed to the cause, unfortunately.”

The fledglings sired by Raziel are more familiar to Kain than his own have been, because he has seen their exact likeness in the fledglings that Vorador called to serve his own ends. They stumble around like newborn deer, all clamouring to get closer to their sire, desperate for his attention as the one reliable constant in this strange new world they’ve been thrust into. Having a handful of hungry fledglings crowding him is not entirely to Raziel’s tastes but he never lets his displeasure show when they are nearby. As Kain had predicted, Raziel’s blood is strong and the fledglings he creates are too, by virtue of their patriarch.

Raziel puts them to work immediately.

And then the second detachment of hunters arrives. They go the way of the first and now the rooms of the mansion are beginning to fill and Kain feels the intoxicating stirring of _progress_ singing within his veins. Strangely, the Reaver at his back seems to feed off his energy, too, humming with deep satisfaction for every new fledgling Raziel raises. Kain has little to do with any of Raziel’s fledglings, doesn’t particularly care to involve himself in their rearing, but whenever they pass him they bow and whisper fearfully amongst themselves, so at least Kain knows his firstborn is instilling the right amount of healthy fear and respect into his offspring.

Two months pass, and they have fifty fledglings to serve them, each working to dig into Vorador’s vaults to extend the beginnings of Kain’s empire. Fifty fledglings loyal to Kain through Raziel, fifty soldiers in a slowly-forming army that will soon be called upon to deliver Nosgoth to her rightful ruler.

Alongside that, Kain decides to raise the third of his brood. This means he’ll have to make the rather lengthy journey between Termogent and the Sarafan tomb, and though Raziel protests - _vocally_ \- Kain resolves to go alone. The journey will be quicker without unnecessary tagalongs, but overall Kain knows he’ll have to stay longer than he has with either Raziel or Turel, because he’ll need to ensure the new fledgling is strong enough to make the journey back to the mansion without any difficulty.

It’s become almost routine now that Kain knows exactly what to do, though as with Turel, he gives a lesser portion of his soul to the thirdborn, Dumah, which makes the process take longer than he would like. It all happens as he’s come to expect, even if it does begin to drag on somewhat; the hollow screaming and the ghastly reforming, the desperate, almost feral lust for blood once the dual souls are settled inside revitalised flesh. Kain passes the time hunting for lack of much else to do and by the time the light of comprehension begins to fill Dumah’s eyes, Kain is desperately ready to return to the mansion.

For the comfort of a proper bed, of course. Not because he’s concerned about how Raziel and Turel have fared in his absence.

...He does hope they haven’t torn each other to shreds while he’s been gone.

“I hope you don’t have the fiery temper of your brothers,” Kain tells Dumah as they prepare to depart the tomb and to finally rid themselves of the rancid stench of decay contained within. “Though I suppose we’ll have to wait a while before we discover what sort of personality you possess.”

Dumah is not a particularly thoughtful creature, having none of Raziel’s sense of curiosity about the world around him. He regards things with a sort of calm detachment, almost disinterest, except for when Kain speaks with him. The only time he displays any sort of interest is when they cease travelling as the sun’s light threatens the sky, and Kain settles them down into a cave or the like for the day, speaking in quiet tones about things Dumah must know, much in the same way he used to speak with Raziel before he regained his powers of speech. Dumah listens intently, sometimes closing his eyes as though to ingest Kain’s words better, and there are times when he looks as though he would like to ask questions, but as he has not yet regained the ability to do so, conversation remains one-sided.

When finally the dark and silent wall of Termogent’s trees rears up to greet them, something unfurls in Kain’s chest at the sight. Relief - possibly, as foreign as it is - to be home after so long, but whatever it is it’s not unpleasant, and at last the tight, anxious sensation that had made a home for itself within Kain’s breast over the past weeks finally subsides.

“Stay close beside me, child,” Kain bids Dumah, gesturing the fledgling to step closer. “The swamps of Termogent are deadly if you lose your footing. Tread cautiously and you’ll not be harmed, but the ground is not as steady as it seems. The touch of water burns us steadily, and I’ll not be happy to lose you to a sinkhole after all the time and effort I expended to raise you.”

Dumah does not look as concerned about the swamps as Kain would like, though he does obey and stay close as Kain instructed. Until his first evolutionary sleep, yes, water will not burn as severely as it does Kain, at least after prolonged periods, but it will still sting and Kain briefly entertains the idea of dumping Dumah’s ignorant body into a puddle just to drive the point home that it should be avoided.

No, probably best not to do that. He wouldn’t want to scare the fledgling out of bathing, after all.

They aren’t far from the centre of the forest when Kain’s keen senses pick up a foreign scent that stills him immediately. Dumah, senses still somewhat dulled from his resurrection, does not halt until Kain hisses sharply and clutches his forearm tight enough to hurt. The fledgling whines but falls silent when Kain levels a glare at him, suddenly alert when the sound of light footsteps fades into their awareness not twenty feet ahead.

Far too close for a human to be able to get to a vampire without detection. No, that means that the interloper themselves is also--

_A vampire._

But not a vampire Kain recognises. The scent is sharp, almost resinous, like pinewood or myrrh. Not unpleasant, but alarming in its unfamiliarity. Unconsciously, Kain ushers Dumah behind himself, sinking low into a half-couch, prepared to strike if necessary.

The interloper does not reveal themselves, which means they’re smart at least. They fall still, likely sensing Kain’s presence in turn, and the bright hiss of a sword being unsheathed rings through the dense trees surrounding them.

“Identify yourselves, strangers,” a low voice comes, calm, authoritative, female. “You’ve stumbled onto land belonging to my masters. State your intentions and I may accept that you’ve trespassed in error.”

Oh. Oh, this is _delightful._

“Peace, my lady,” Kain calls, straightening from his defensive stance. “We are but travellers, not enemies. Or can you not tell from our scents that we are kin?”

“Approach slowly,” comes the command and it takes an extraordinary amount of willpower for Kain to suppress his laughter. “We know of no other vampire clans nearby.”

“We have no clan,” Kain says, beginning a slow approach. Dumah trails close behind, furtive and anxious at his sire’s back, but Kain has no time to reassure him, too amused by the proceedings to do away with his unintentional farce. “We heard of a bastion in the forest under the rule of benevolent masters, a haven for our kind. We seek sanctuary, if you will kindly grant it.”

Silence stretches between Kain and his unseen watcher, unbroken save for the panicked pace of Dumah’s breathing. Kain slows when the scent of the vampiress strengthens and he deduces she’s likely hidden only a few scant feet away, in the cover of dense shrubbery. Wise, if somewhat ignorant. Kain will be having words with whomever sired new fledglings without imparting this rather crucial piece of knowledge to them.

Probably Turel, if Kain had to guess.

“You will follow us,” the vampiress finally says and Kain inclines his head as half a dozen swords are unsheathed around them. Oh, very clever. Using the swamp’s astringent odour to mask their scents to surround their quarry. Kain would be impressed if he were not so irritated. That kind of strategy is Raziel’s forte, which means these fledglings are likely his, which _also_ means he’s been slacking in their instruction.

It seems Kain has done Turel a disservice in assuming him to be at fault. Ah well. It’s not like he’ll ever know.

“We will follow, my lady,” Kain says with all the respectful deference of the class his human self had one possessed.

It’s then that their observer finally makes herself known, stepping out from the trees as the rest of her detachment follow suit. Fine features, fair and beautiful, definitely belonging to Kain’s vainest offspring. It seems his sons have not been idle in his absence, if they saw fit to turn more fledglings, because of the seven faces surrounding them, comely as they are, Kain recognises none. They’re kitted out in simple leather livery, obviously repurposed but stripped of all identifying markings so as to be deliberately unremarkable. Out of all these factors, all that Kain recognises are the swords, because he has faced down many an enemy bearing these identical weapons.

It seems the hunters have made more attempts to reclaim their lost bastion. They have, evidently, not succeeded.

The vampiress jerks her head and her compatriots move as one, flanking Kain and his terrified fledgling in two neat lines of three, swords at the ready. Kain is wholly unconcerned, though he keeps a firm hand on Dumah’s arm to still any possible nervous outbursts from his anxious son. Their vampiric custodians- oh, this is _intensely_ amusing - lead them through the forest, completely ignorant of the identities of their supposed captives. Were it not so comical, Kain would slaughter the lot of them for the insult they so unknowingly delivered. As it stands, he’s more interested to see Raziel’s reaction when his fledglings present their quarry to him

That, and Kain does not hold the idea of slaughtering his own kind in particularly high regard, much less kin of his own fledglings. And inconvenient capture aside, what awaits them Kain could not have foreseen, though had he spared any thought for it, perhaps he might have.

Through the murk of the swamp and pre-dawn mist, the courtyard of the mansion comes into view, though it is not at all how Kain left it. Wooden scaffolds have been erected all around the perimeter, fencing in the areas where the stone walls had crumbled with the ages it was left abandoned. A gated entryway has been built in to replace the iron that was ripped away long ago, and above it is a walkway upon which two vampires stand sentinel, bearing green sashes emblazoned with a rune Kain does not recognise. Twelve weeks, it seems, is plenty of time for progress. Kain does not know whether to be proud or furious.

Proud because, even in his absence, his burgeoning bloodline stands firm and resolute, evolving with a pace that beggars belief.

Furious, because all of this has been accomplished without his behest or approval.

But, perhaps that is the remnant of his youthful, foolish pride speaking. He should, after all, strive to no longer be that brash, impetuous thing that had acted so recklessly when his body was still human and flawed. That same foolishness that had followed him into his fledgling years and guided his actions with desires born of vengeance and rage. He is the sire of the new vampire race and, as such, should probably conduct himself in a manner befitting that station.

Perhaps. Rage does still have its benefits, after all. A healthy dose of fear does little harm and makes servants of many.

He will reserve judgement for now.

“Open the gates,” the vampiress calls and she is obeyed with surprising swiftness. There is, evidently, a hierarchy that has been established in Kain’s absence. He’ll be interested to learn it, once his firstborn explains what the _hell_ has gone on while Kain has been away. He has resolved to reserve judgement, but his skin still prickles with the smouldering embers of a fire that will rage once stoked sufficiently. He may strive for aplomb and that stately composure, but his blood has always run hot and his fingers still itch for the blade of his sword, for the chance to make an example of these foolish fledglings.

No. _Think of it not as surrender, but as biding your time for the right moment to act._

“Send for Lord Raziel,” the vampiress says once the gate is opened and they are ushered inside. It creaks shut with a resounding thud. _How_ have they managed this is only a few short months? In spite of himself, Kain finds he cannot help but be impressed by the sheer ingenuity he has returned home to discover. “We encountered two clanless vampires in the forest. They claim to seek sanctuary, I want him to decide their fate.”

 _Yes,_ Kain thinks, amusement rising and quelling the simmering rage momentarily. _Send for Raziel, I would very much like to speak with him._

The vampiress is again obeyed immediately and a slight young vampire bounds forward to fetch _Lord_ Raziel so that he might decide Kain’s fate. That is the thought that proves to be Kain’s undoing and he gives over finally to that building amusement with an uproarious torrent of laughter that has his sides seizing and has the vampires surrounding him raising their swords in alarm.

“Does something amuse you?” The vampiress demands, her own sword raised. “Speak, whelp, before I cut your tongue out.”

Ah. Pity.

Kain’s laughter does not quite fade, but it shifts into something dark, something vicious, and in the next breath he has drawn the Reaver from his back and severed the vampiress’ head cleanly from her shoulders with a single, deadly swipe.

In the stunned silence that follows, the Reaver _purrs._ and Kain’s laughter finally ceases.

The next moment has the potential to end very badly for Kain, if the amassed vampires have any of their sire’s sense. If they attack together, Kain could be overpowered - not _easily_ , but the possibility is there, he has to admit - and they could kill him before he had the chance to mount a strong enough defence. Thankfully - for the fledglings’ sake if not for Kain’s - intervention arrives before violence can break out.

“Hold!” Comes Raziel’s sharp cry, ringing through the courtyard. Though enraged by the death of one of their own, the fledglings obey without question, sheathing their swords at once. Raziel strides over and for a moment Kain forgets his irritation, his weariness, his mounting rage, cheered as he is by the sight of his favourite, but even that is not enough to stay his temper.

Though he doesn’t get the chance to release it. The moment Raziel’s eyes flit from the vampiress’ cooling corpse to Kain and the bloodied Reaver, comprehension dawns in his eyes, followed by quickly mounting horror.

So he understands the gravity of the situation. Good.

“You’ve forgotten yourself, Raziel,” Kain says as the Reaver begins to absorb the blood of the fallen vampiress. Once the serpentine blade is unsullied once more, Kain returns it to his back. “In your carelessness, one of your own has fallen.”

“My _carelessness?”_ Raziel repeats, frowning. “You would assume a failing on my part for the idiocy of one fledgling?”

“Does an ignorant subordinate not reflect badly on the superior?” Kain counters with no real heat. Confusion shivers through the gathered fledglings but Kain pays them no mind. They should have surmised by now, from the felled vampiress, that they matter little to him. “Have you neglected to tell your fledglings of me? I should be insulted-- In fact, I am. Should I take this as tantamount to a challenge? Did you get used to power in my absence and decide to amass a small military to oust me on my return?”

If Raziel were an idiot, Kain knows how he would respond to such a weighty accusation. As it stands, Raziel is no fool, but he does possess a fiery temper, and has been known to act viciously when enraged. Kain watches now as Raziel’s first response half-forms on his face, lips pulling back from his teeth in the beginnings of a vicious snarl. He catches himself at the last moment, inhaling sharply through his nose and dropping immediately to a knee, bowing his head in supplication. Shock replaces the fledglings’ confusion. At least until Raziel next speaks.

“Nothing of the sort, Lord Kain,” Raziel says, with enough mustered deference to soothe Kain’s injured pride sufficiently. “Each day was spent preparing avidly for your return. Your absence was… keenly felt.”

Suddenly, Kain despises their audience more than before. He had intended to make an example of his firstborn, but now he just wants… He isn’t sure exactly, but the rest of this conversation must be had in private, if it is to be had at all.

Raziel rises smoothly in the next instance, turning away from Kain to address the gathered vampires. “An egregious error has been made this day,” he says, voice ringing with an authority Kain has not heard from him before. He finds he quite likes it. _Princeling_ , indeed. “Have I not made it abundantly clear that the lives you live, the gifts you have been given, would not have come to pass if not for the grace of the highest of us? Have I not stated that your loyalty belongs to him above all? Have I erred in passing that gift on to all of you, because none of you have even a _scrap_ of common sense? Be thankful that only one of you fell today, for if our Lord had not been merciful, not a single one of you would have lived to see the next dusk.”

One by one, the fledglings bend to take a knee much as Raziel had done, and watching them all supplicate themselves so willingly causes something new and _powerful_ to rise in Kain’s chest. All this had been, he can see now, is a simple misunderstanding, vampires following the orders of their superiors, loyal to a fault. If Kain were a lesser man - or possibly a kinder one - he might feel remorse for the needless shedding of blood of one of their own. Instead of remorse, however, he will let it serve as an example, and trusts that there will be no more foolish mistakes made now that they know him.

“Please, come inside,” Raziel says, dismissing the fledglings with a simple wave. “It is… good to see you.”

“Circumstances aside, I feel the same,” Kain says, clasping Raziel’s shoulder tightly. “You will have to apprise me of all that has occurred in my absence. You’ve made progress I never could have predicted.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Raziel says, though he looks immensely pleased. “It was a case of making the best of a bad situation, but I’ll tell you all once you’ve fed and rested some.” His gaze slides to Dumah at last and, surprisingly, softens. “And this, I assume, is our newest brother?”

“Dumah,” Kain says, placing a hand on the small of his youngest’s back. Dumah does not recoil, though tension is still wound tight within his body, and he sniffs the air curiously when Raziel steps forward.

“Welcome, brother,” Raziel says kindly, reaching out with careful slowness to take Dumah’s hands in his own. “You have done us a great service in standing beside our Lord as he returned to us. I’ll have you shown to your rooms, if you’d like that? We had them made ready for you in preparation for your arrival.”

Dumah, though he cannot speak, makes a pleased sound of assent and Kain is content to let Raziel take the fledgling off of his hands at long last. Relieved of that responsibility for a time, Kain heads for the mansion’s entrance, intent on cleansing the dirt from the road from his skin and sleeping until dusk.

After that, he and Raziel will talk. It has been too long.

* * *

After gritting his teeth through the painful process of bathing and washing the sweat and dirt from his limbs, Kain pulls on a loose shirt and trousers and settles down in his rooms into one of the once-luxurious armchairs that had been salvaged from the wreckage, with a full pitcher of fresh blood and a roaring fire in the hearth. Relaxed and refreshed for the first time in weeks, Kain regards the goblet and its contents sedately, wishing rather uncharacteristically for the taste of wine.

While sustenance can only be derived from blood, pleasure can be found in the imbibing of good drink, though Vorador had little patience for the affair, and chose to replace all human needs singularly with wine. Kain has only imbibed a handful of times since his resurrection, and each time had been pleasant enough. He’d been relieved at the time to find that his sense of taste had not been warped by his dark gift, merely amplified and augmented, much the way the rest of his body had been.

Perhaps he’ll see to having some casks procured from a local tavern. If they are to live as decadently as the mansion’s former occupant would wish, then frivolous items like good wine and strong ale should be considered amongst those novelties.

Something to consider, at least. Once he has rested.

He is disturbed, though not unwantedly, by a quiet knock at his chamber door. He calls out permission to enter and as expected, Raziel slips inside, though Kain is immediately taken aback by the distressed expression on his firstborn’s face.

“Whatever is the matter?” Kain asks, shifting as though to stand. “Has something befallen--”

He’s interrupted by Raziel’s quick-paced steps over to his chair, startled when Raziel sinks to his knees in a display of subservience Kain has never seen him perform and would be perfectly content never to see again. Taking a knee in obeisance is one thing, _this_ \- whatever Raziel is doing now - is _wrong._

“For my fledgling’s transgression,” Raziel says, more to the floor than his sire, “I cannot apologise enough. I will accept whatever punishment you see fit, but the thought that you considered even for a _moment_ that I would seek to usurp you--”

“Oh, be quiet, you fool,” Kain says at once, harsher than he intends merely because he wants to stop _all_ of this in it’s ridiculous entirety. “It was not your error and an example has been made. If you truly think I believed you to be duplicitous, you are more of an idiot than I ever considered you to be. If I thought for a moment that you sought to overthrow me, dear Raziel, you would be long dead already.”

Raziel opens his mouth to no doubt rebuff that, because even seeking absolution the fool has too much pride to simply stay silent, but Kain forestalls him by leaning forward and tilting his chin up with gentle fingers beneath his chin. Raziel’s eyes widen a fraction, darting up to Kain’s and filling with half-delighted, half-stunned confusion.

“I don’t want this from you,” Kain tells him, voice sinking low. Subvocals thrill deep in Raziel’s throat in response but it would undercut Kain’s point for him to answer in kind, no matter how much he wants to. “I know I hold your loyalty and your respect and your customary deference is enough. _This_ is unacceptable. Vampires do not _grovel_ , Raziel. If you must bend a knee, do so with honour. Now get up before I throw you out on your backside for all your fledglings to see.”

Raziel laughs, only a soft exhalation, but it relaxes his countenance and he rises to his feet again, reassured and thankfully no longer pitifully subservient. He does, however, wordlessly refill Kain’s goblet before taking a seat himself, but this is an act of service Kain will allow, if only because it benefits him and does not degrade his princeling.

“I hope you’ll forgive me this small display of weakness,” Raziel says as he curls into his chair like a cat, long limbs tucked gracefully underneath himself. The firelight casts his angular features into something softer, yet no less striking. Kain makes an inquiring sound and Raziel smiles somewhat indulgently. “But I have to admit that… these past weeks were trying, without you. I thought at first it was because I missed your guidance, the reassurance of your presence, but while that may still be so, I missed…” He looks away. “It is the same sense when I recall our time in Coorhagen’s library, or the days we spent in the farmhouse. Nostalgia, I suppose.”

“A roundabout way of admitting that you missed me, but you’ve always been the verbose sort,” Kain says, teasingly. Raziel laughs, a rich, deep sound, and something inside Kain’s chest aches. “Did you miss me, child? You seem to have fared well enough in my absence.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Raziel says, tone dipping into annoyance. “And I have had to maintain that appearance and it has tested my patience immensely. Without you to temper him, your impetuous secondborn has been quite busy making a damned nuisance of himself.”

“Oh?” Kain sips from his goblet, raising his eyebrows. “And I’m assuming Turel would not bend to your authority?”

“Was there ever any chance he would?” Raziel asks, scoffing. “Turel is beholden to no authority except your own, no matter how hard I try. And believe me, I tried. At first with reason, then with violence, and none of them worked. He got it into his fool brain that he wanted to test his might on the village west of the forest. At first I thought it was because we had seen no more of the hunters and he was bloodthirsty, but then I realised he wanted fledglings of his own.”

“Ah,” Kain says. “Yes, that’s understandable, I suppose.”

“Understandable, but irresponsible,” Raziel counters. “I had no qualms with allowing him to sire his own, would have welcomed it, in fact. The deeper we dig past the vaults, the more hands we need, and with fortifications to the mansion becoming a priority, we didn’t have the numbers necessary to maintain the speed of work we’d grown accustomed to.”

“So what was the issue?”

Raziel huffs irritably. “The issue was that he just wanted leave to unleash himself upon the village with no plan, no strategy, nothing but brute force and his own skill. I forbade it, for his own safety, mind, and he disobeyed because he is destiny bound to _annoy_ me, and to my endless frustration, he succeeded. I didn’t _want_ him to fail, necessarily, but I wouldn’t have minded if he’d been knocked down a peg or two. He captured and changed half the village in a single evening, corralled the rest, and he’s been insufferable ever since.”

Kain laughs. “Oh, I bet that stung your pride.”

“Significantly.” Raziel sniffs haughtily and Kain laughs harder. “But after some… Calculated capitulation on my part, we managed to reach something of an accord. This is the arrangement we have now. Our fledglings work together, in rotational shifts below the mansion where they dig, and in patrolling the perimeter while we work to fortify the mansion. Ultimately though, we find it easier to keep the fledglings separate. Turel's obey his orders, and mine obey me. All are, of course, ultimately loyal to yourself, but partitioning them makes it easier to control them. Turel suggested the idea of clans and I could not fault it."

"He does have some good ideas sometimes doesn't he?" Kain muses.

"Sparingly," Raziel mutters like it pains him. "And as you've no doubt noticed, Turel favours strength in his fledglings, which I suppose is understandable, considering his own personality.”

“Whereas you simply favour a pretty face,” Kain says, smirking when Raziel bristles with indignation. “You cannot hide it from me, little one, the evidence is clear. You’ve always favoured comely things. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I favour it, yes,” Raziel snaps, offended. “If I’m to bestow our gift, I can choose to be selective with my fledglings. But aside from the first I sired out of necessity, I now have the chance to be more discerning.”

“Is that so?” Kain hums, just to watch Raziel puff up further with affront. It is too amusing and far too easy to ruffle his proverbial feathers.

“I favour it,” Raziel repeats testily, “but what I _prize_ is intelligence. Ionassa clearly did not possess the critical thinking I thought she did, which proved her undoing. Every one of our fledglings has been told of you, Kain. There isn’t a single one who doesn’t share your vision for Nosgoth. If she hadn’t reacted so, she would have been able to share in it.”

“Ionassa,” Kain says, considering. “The vampiress I beheaded?”

“Yes.”

“A shame. She was fair indeed.” Kain’s smile turns sharp. “And of your fine fledglings, have you selected a bedmate yet? Or do you simply select whichever one you fancy at the time? From the way they regard you, you’d have no difficulty finding a willing partner.” Kain swirls the contents of his goblet, a thought striking him that evokes a deep frisson of strange and savage satisfaction. “Or did I inadvertently strike your preferred bedmate down in my anger?”

Raziel does not answer and Kain’s gaze snaps up to his, for a moment both pleased and appalled by the prospect that he may have done the very thing he assumed he had in jest. He’s gratified, somewhat, by how viscerally _appalled_ Raziel looks at the suggestion, which is in itself rather confusing.

“Did you not consider the possibility?” Kain asks, genuinely curious now. “The fledglings will always harbour some sort of fascination with you as their sire, little one. It was always the way with Vorador’s fledglings, and possibly why he always had no shortage of wives. The man was an unrepentant hedonist in all matters. How he ever got anything done, I’ll never know.”

“I know,” Raziel manages, though it seems to take some effort to force the words out. “Not-- Not about Vorador, the more I find out about him, the less I think I would have liked him. I mean, the… matter of fledglings adoring their sire. I know that.”

“I’m sure,” Kain says, returning his attention to his now-empty goblet. Raziel, though he seems to be suffering some sort of internal disquiet, gets up to refill the goblet for him. Kain absently murmurs his thanks and Raziel inclines his head in response. “So why do you look as though I suggested you slaughter every fledgling on the premises, rather than bed them? If you know they desire you, why not take what is offered?”

“I wasn’t talking about my fledglings,” Raziel murmurs, suddenly unable to meet Kain’s gaze. “I don’t want any of them.”

“You’re talking in circles,” Kain grouses, stretching his legs out. “It’s impossible to get a straight answer out of you, you know that? And what’s the point of handpicking the most attractive fledglings if you aren’t going to make use of them when they’re willing?”

“I don’t _want_ them,” Raziel repeats. “Don’t you… Don’t you know?”

“Raziel, I’ve little patience for this warped game of riddles you’re trying to trap me into,” Kain snaps. “I’ve been twelve weeks without the comforts of a home and I was hoping to enjoy some pleasant company before I slept for the next three days, but instead you’re intent on giving me a damned headache. Speak your mind or I will do as I threatened and toss you out.”

Raziel winces as though Kain’s impatient words are a physical blow. “I don’t mean to, I just… find it difficult to speak plainly.”

“I’ve noticed,” Kain comments dryly. “And yet when you have an opinion, you have no problem making everyone in the immediate vicinity acutely aware of it.”

Kain has always had little patience for veiled comments and duplicitous words. Occasionally guilty of his own bouts of loquaciousness, perhaps it is rather hypocritical to demand directness of others, but he honestly has no time for it otherwise. Raziel is certainly voluble in the extreme, but can be succinct when required. He’s not had trouble conveying his thoughts since he was a fledgling, when speech was a fleeting thing he had not yet mastered anew. It’s strange to see him struggle so, and Kain is somewhat concerned by it, at the same time he is deeply irritated.

Whatever the reason for his favourite’s uncustomary reticence, Kain would much rather he just spit it out, rather than flit around it erratically like a moth to a flame. He has no idea why the concept of bedding another would be so daunting, unless Raziel is so consumed by nervousness over the act itself that he has lost any confidence he may have possessed as a man. Though… He _was_ a priest. Perhaps he swore off all carnal acts when he took his oaths. Or maybe his resurrection has overwritten all knowledge and experience he once held on the subject and he’s simply beset by his own inexperience.

The thought is almost charming, in a way.

“My Lord,” Raziel says, sounding pained. “ _Kain_... I…” He sighs heavily. “Forgive me for taking so much of your time. You said yourself that you are weary. I’ll leave you to your rest.”

Well, that’s that, then. Whatever it is that’s bothering him, he’s deigned not to share it with Kain and Kain himself has better things to do than attempt to draw confessions out of a stubborn fledgling. “As you say. Go, then.”

Raziel nods and stands, looking utterly defeated. “Rest well, my Lord,” are his parting words, accompanied by a stiff bow, and then he is gone, leaving Kain alone with his frankly bewildered thoughts.

“Insufferable little whelp,” Kain mutters to himself, dragging a hand down his face.

* * *

Word rapidly spreads of Kain’s arrival and Ionessa’s subsequent demise, which Kain appreciates because it means every fledgling he encounters either bows so low their nose almost touches the floor, or they simply scurry out of his way in fearful avoidance. He cares little and prefers to have nothing to do with them for the most part, content enough with his half-formed cadre of lieutenants, competent and elite as they are. Dumah’s addition is not yet fully integrated, will not be until he can speak and enters his first evolutionary sleep, but Turel and Raziel accept him readily and that’s all that Kain can really ask for at this moment in time.

A week or so after Dumah’s introduction, it becomes apparent that he takes after Turel in that he prizes strength over strategy, but he does not have Turel’s short temper, and regards Raziel with the similar sort of fear with which he beholds his sire. Kain minds this little, content to have Raziel share some of the reverence he will command from the rest of his sons when they rise, as it will ultimately make them easier to control. Turel, though, is delighted to be joined by a brother who also prizes strength, and the two of them spar often enough to keep themselves occupied so that Kain can claim Raziel’s full attention as they ever so slowly expand their empire.

Or that had been the plan, at least.

Because Raziel is avoiding Kain and Kain has very little patience for it, but the elusive vampire proves almost impossible to locate at the best of times, and when Kain does manage to encounter him, he manages to escape with a startling sense of ease. It is intensely frustrating, but as of yet Kain has not managed to capture him for long enough to shake some sense into him, no matter how much he wants to.

This is not the first time he’s avoided Kain, nor will it likely be the last, but this is the first time Raziel has removed himself from Kain’s company of his own volition, when there hasn’t been a violent catalyst preceding it. The last time they avoided each other was when Kain brought Turel into the fold. This time, Kain has absolutely no idea what has prompted Raziel to become a phantom set on lurking in Kain’s periphery.

“Dumah, Turel,” Kain snaps one evening, striding across the courtyard that his secondborn has fashioned into a makeshift sparring ground. Turel lowers his stave and turns his attention to his sire; a poor move, it turns out, because Dumah takes the opportunity to pay his brother back for being soundly trounced repeatedly for the past few hours and smacks him roughly round the back of the head with his own stave, snapping the shaft clean in two. Turel responds by calmly hoisting his younger brother into his arms and throwing him bodily across the courtyard. Dumah skids to a stop thirty feet away and does not get up, utterly defeated.

“What is it, Lord?” Turel asks, brushing his hands off.

“Right, yes,” Kain says, dragging his gaze away from Dumah’s supine form. “If you see Raziel, tell him to come find me immediately, or I’m going to start slaughtering every one of his fledglings I encounter. He’s played the hunted long enough and I’m sick to death of it.” Turel’s face splits into a wide grin which Kain resolves to quash at once. “And if you don’t tell him, I’ll have your fledglings, too.”

“Ah, of course, Lord,” Turel says, shrinking back. “I’ll tell him as soon as I see him next. Is… Is he alright?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Kain snaps, irritation finally igniting into useless fury. “I haven’t spoken to the runt in a week, he’s determined to avoid me and I’ve no idea _why_.”

This is enough to distress even Turel, who cares little for anything that isn’t blood or violence and detests convolution even more. “This isn’t like him at all. I don’t suppose he’s upset about the vampiress?”

“Doubtful,” Kain mutters. “We discussed her and he didn’t seem unduly troubled by her demise. Besides, he practically commands a _harem_ of the bastards, I doubt she was the favourite.”

“No, I don’t think she was,” Turel agrees. “But yes, when I see him, I will tell him to come to you at once, you have my word.”

“My thanks, child.” Kain glances to the sky and nods, pleased that the weather will allow for a hunt tonight. He needs some sort of outlet for his rage and if he chances sparring with anyone other than Raziel, he’s likely to slaughter them before they can even put up the fight he so wants.

Although….

No. Needless bloodshed is not the answer. That was always Vorador’s preference, not Kain’s. He likes to think he has a _touch_ more decorum than mindless slaughter.

“Lord?” Turel says after a moment and Kain comes back to himself with a brisk shake of his head. “If I might… To ease your tensions, I’m sure one of my fledglings would suit your needs acceptably.”

Kain blinks, momentarily struck silent by the offer, not out of offense, but just because he hadn’t even considered it as an option. He does so now, allows himself to consider the possibility and finds the notion… Rather stale.

“The sentiment is appreciated, child,” Kain says, a little stiffly. “But I must decline. As you were, I’ve taken your attention for too long. _Don’t_ injure your brother too badly. He’s yet to fully mature and creating more of you is considerably more arduous for me than it is for you.”

“I won’t,” Turel says, turning towards Dumah - still prone - with a laugh. “It’s all in the name of training, I won’t _kill_ him.” To Dumah, he calls, “up you get, brother! I’ll make a decent fighter out of you yet!”

* * *

The adage goes “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and Kain is, unfortunately, now fully aware that the saying is correct but also incomplete. Without Raziel’s companionship, Kain feels somewhat bereft, which is not a pleasant feeling for someone with his level of influence over the court he now finds himself presiding over in their slowly forming ranks. But more than that, each day that passes with Raziel _still_ avoiding him, not only does Kain actually miss the infuriating little runt, he also resolves that the moment he sees Raziel, he’s going to toss his sorry hide out of the nearest, highest window he can find. Or possibly dunk him bodily in the nearest swamp and watch him sizzle like a slab of steak in a pan.

Both options are pleasing in equal ways, but until Kain actually gets the chance to throttle his firstborn, he has to deal with the near-constant grating of his nerves that comes with being so frustrated _all of the time._

Kain isn’t used to feeling so inept and he finds that he absolutely despises the concept and everything about it. Because of Raziel’s newly elusive nature, Kain is caught in an unbearable stalemate where he cannot even progress in his subjugation of Nosgoth, because his first lieutenant, his prized strategist, is nowhere to be found. In his ridiculous petulance, Raziel is stalling Kain’s rise to power and _that_ is unacceptable.

Hence why, the _second_ Kain gets his hands on Raziel, he is going to _kill_ him.

Turel, true to his word, had passed on Kain’s violent message, reported thus to Kain with the explanation that Raziel had just nodded and walked away and Kain is so enraged by the _audacity_ of his firstborn that he nearly beheads Turel simply because he had the misfortune of being the nearest creature to him. He’d held back, barely, and thrown a table through the north library window instead.

It is an unacceptable situation but until Raziel stops his ridiculous avoidance, Kain cannot do anything about it. As far as Kain can tell, he’s not even returned to his own chambers in the past few days because Kain has waited there in an attempt to catch him. There is nothing at all to be done and worse, Raziel knows it. Because Kain is not going to start indiscriminately striking down Raziel’s fledglings. Kain can be cruel and capricious and all manner of unpleasant things, but he is not evil.

He considers it, though. He considers it and he comes dangerously close to acting on those dark, violent thoughts, touches the blade of the Reaver and nearly draws it on the first hapless fledgling that crosses his path. His hand is stayed by a single thought, and that thought drives out all the impotent rage from Kain’s body in a wave so absolute it nearly topples him over.

No, he can’t strike Raziel’s fledglings down. Doing so might turn Raziel against him, and as uncertain as he is now about Raziel’s loyalties, Kain cannot take that risk.

So there is nothing to be done. A stalemate in a game Kain never wanted to play.

“Attend,” Kain snaps to the fledgling whose life he so very nearly took. “Tell every fledgling you see, every single one you find, every soul you happen across until you’ve spoken to everyone in the mansion. Tell them all that if they see that bastard Raziel, he is to meet me at dusk in the courtyard, else he will be hunted. Do you understand?” The terrified fledgling nods and flees the moment Kain dismisses him. With his message dictated, Kain settles himself down to wait.

* * *

The night threatens rain but even that does not deter Kain from his goal and he stands, alone, in the courtyard, boots wearing divots deep into the sand strewn about the flagstones that make up Turel’s sparring ground from all his impatient pacing. He stops finally and turns his gaze to the patches of silent stars visible through the breaks in the cloud cover, the Reaver just as silent at his back as he waits and waits and waits.

Footsteps fade into his awareness first, and though he has given word that no one is to disturb him, Kain does not turn around in anger because the scent that follows the footsteps is the one he has been missing for almost a fortnight. With that confirmation Kain turns to face his errant and elusive firstborn and that familiar rush of peace that usually floods Kain at the sight of him is conspicuously absent.

Raziel looks tired, but more than that Kain cannot discern. Deep, crescent bruises underline his eyes, stark against his skin, and the gold of the eyes above has dulled considerably. If it were possible for their kind, Kain would believe him sick, but they possess an innate fortitude against maladies of the flesh, so it cannot be sickness. Again, Kain cannot glean anything else from Raziel’s expression, because aside from being drawn and somewhat gaunt, it is also carefully shuttered. A perfect façade crafted to keep him out.

“If there were ever a time for you to grovel for forgiveness, it would be now,” Kain says into the still night, voice carrying easily over the distance between them. “I did not think I would need to guard against such an insult from you, little one.”

Raziel flinches at the endearment, the way Kain had hoped - had intended - that he would. Still, Raziel says nothing, and other than that brief instance of pain, his careful mask does not falter. It cracks, slightly, but does not fall away. The true workings of his mind are still a mystery and Kain has no patience left for it.

In one smooth movement, Kain draws the Reaver and sinks into his familiar stance, sword held aloft above his shoulder, the point of the serpentine blade aimed toward Raziel to declare him, unequivocally, foe. For a long moment Raziel only watches, silent, then he steps into the sparring grounds, giving Kain a wide berth, and draws a broadsword from the racks against the eastern wall. All the while Kain waits patiently, unmoving, sword at the ready.

“I meant no disrespect,” is Raziel’s eventual response. He speaks with his back to Kain, testing the weight of the sword in his grip. “I was distressed and simply wanted time to settle my thoughts. I feared my proximity to you would hinder that progress, and so I stayed away.”

“And what of my progress?” Kain demands, left foot twisting the imprint of his sole into the sand, warping it. “Did you not consider that your absence would impede us all?”

“I did not,” Raziel says, turning at last. He spins the sword in his hand with a flourish, twirling the grip over the back of it before grasping it again, fingers tight but wrist loose; ready and willing and anticipation shivers down Kain’s spine. “Selfishly, perhaps. I assumed you could spare me for a few days.”

“You presume much, little one.” Kain flexes his grip on the Reaver. “I think I may have been too lenient with you. Having my favour for so long seems to have given you the idea that you can take whatever liberties you fancy.”

“”Favour””? Raziel sneers. “Is that what you call it? While you hound me and make unreasonable demands of me and threaten my fledglings?”

“You’re in far too precarious a position to act so disrespectfully,” Kain warns. “Enough. Let me tell you how this is going to go. Either you disarm me, or I’ll run you through.”

Raziel’s grip on his sword tightens, creaking the worn and aged leather beneath his fingers. “Very well. Let’s begin.”

The air shifts and the fight begins, though neither of them are prepared to act first. They circle each other slowly, sand shifting beneath their boots in trails of arcs and whorls as they each assess their opponent, watching and waiting for the right window of opportunity. Close and closer they inch with each revolution and Kain watches tension ripple through Raziel from the knees up as they draw together. Anticipation has made him nervous and that is what Kain intends to exploit.

A twitch of the Reaver, a feint, and Raziel draws his blade up at once to guard against the perceived attack, but the moment he does Kain sinks low, drawing the Reaver down and across in a savage arc towards Raziel’s midriff. Raziel spots the misdirection a moment too late, swinging the blade down at an awkward angle to block as much of the strike’s force as he can. Their blades clash with a hollow clang and through Raziel saves himself from a gutting, the serpentine blade of the Reaver still draws a ragged line through his left hip, tearing through his shirt and dripping blood onto the sand.

As though repelled, they dart back from each other and a choked hiss slips from between Raziel’s teeth.

The Reaver sings in Kain’s grip, crackling with energy as it absorbs Raziel’s blood. Kain begins to raise it, readying for another attack, when something very peculiar happens.

Even Raziel, several feet away, seems to sense it, the strange bend and fold of the air around them, as though the space they are contained within is attempting to collapse in on itself. Almost akin to an earthquake, the ground ripples with enough force to unsteady the both of them and Kain is suddenly beset by a wave of twisted horror that is not his own.

It’s coming from the Reaver.

In much the same way as the blade had wailed when it had first drawn Kain to the Sarafan tomb, it screams now in that baffling, ghostly way it possesses and Kain is struck by the realisation that the blade is unequivocally averse to being used against Raziel. For whatever unknowable reason, the blade is attempting to refuse to strike him down, which means that unless Kain can overpower both blade and firstborn he is effectively fighting two opponents instead of one.

With a snarl of frustration, Kain drives the Reaver into the ground and abandons it for the first time in an age and rips a longsword from the rack Raziel had selected his own weapon from. It’s heavier than Kain is used to and it will take a moment for him to recalibrate his fighting style to the additional weight, but the moment the Reaver leaves Kain’s grip, that terrible supernatural screaming ceases, and though Raziel looks equally bewildered, he seems relieved to see Kain take up a different sword.

Kain gives him no time to recover. In a flurry of mist and steel he lunges and Raziel is only saved from a vicious goring by sheer instinct, throwing up his blade and bracing it with a palm against the flat of it as Kain lashes out. Their swords clash with enough force to draw sparks and Raziel falters back a step, teeth grit tight as he fights to stay upright under the strength of Kain’s onslaught.

Again Kain rears back to prepare another strike, but this time Raziel follows him. With an impassioned cry Raziel brings his sword round in a wide arc, slashing downwards with the intention to slash Kain from shoulder to hip. The blow is easily blocked, though, by an upward strike of Kain’s forearm, knocking Raziel’s sword arm away and driving the hilt of his own blade into Raziel’s gut. Air whooshes out of Raziel’s mouth in a rush but he doesn’t falter this time, surging forward to _headbutt_ Kain in the face like a common thug, but for how inelegant the movement is, it’s definitely effective, and Kain jerks back with a hiss.

“Disrespectful little wretch,” Kain snarls, kicking Raziel hard on the inside of his left ankle. Raziel grunts and drops to a knee, rolling as Kain brings his sword down, missing him by inches. “All this time I thought reason was the best way to get through to you. I see now that beating lessons into your head would have gone better for the both of us.”

“I wasn’t _trying_ to disrespect you!” Raziel cries, rolling backwards and flipping onto his feet. “I was distressed!”

“Then you should have come to me!” Kain whirls, sword glinting in the moonlight and Raziel has no chance to block, has to dive to avoid losing an arm or worse, and skids across the training ground a few feet before righting himself. “Not hid yourself away like a coward!”

“I wanted to!” Raziel spins his sword as Kain advances, and a torrent of blows is traded back and forth between them, swords sparking as edge meets edge and neither can gain the advantage. With a snarl Kain lunges with renewed vigour and their blades lock together at the hilt, both pushing with all their might to try and force the other back. Muscles bunch and strain, tremble and tense, but neither will concede or back away. “But I had no idea what to say, and the risk that you would cast me out was too great!”

“There _is_ no risk,” Kain spits, baring his fangs. “Of all the idiotic-- I would not cast you out! You know you have my favour, why do you _insist_ on acting like a fickle idiot?! What could have _possibly_ upset you so that you had to remove yourself from me for so long?”

“I needed--” Raziel grunts, cutting himself off as Kain presses harder against his blade, finally forcing him back and down onto a knee. It takes all of Raziel’s might not to buckle, but Kain has him now, there is nowhere for him to escape to and Kain is close to a savage victory. “I needed to make sure I could still serve you! Even though I-- My feelings--”

“Feelings?!” Kain laughs, a brittle, strained sound. “Are you some kind of lovesick maiden?” Underhandedly, he brings his boot down hard against Raziel’s bent knee and with a cry his firstborn falters, blade slipping, and that’s all the opportunity Kain needs to twist his own blade and rip the sword from Raziel’s hand with skillful flourish. It lands several feet away, discarded and unreachable and Raziel is left disarmed and panting, nothing left to do but turn his face up towards his master as Kain rears back to deliver on his dark promise of running him through.

“Yes,” Raziel breathes and closes his eyes.

Kain’s sword clatters to the ground. Raziel’s eyes snap open at the sound but before he can speak again, before he can move or feel relief that Kain has chosen not to spear him through the gut, Kain seizes him by the throat, claws digging into pale flesh and drawing ruby droplets of blood.

“Explain yourself,” Kain hisses, relaxing his grip by a fraction. Raziel sucks in a sharp breath once able and Kain digs a claw into the side of his neck further in warning. “ _Concisely._ ”

“Fledglings adore their masters,” Raziel blurts out in a breathless rush. Strands of hair fall into his face, obscuring eyes that have regained their customary fire. “You said so yourself and I thought you _knew_. I never hid it, but I couldn’t find the words. I showed it in other ways and you never acted so I thought… That you didn’t-- That you didn’t feel what I thought you felt. There were times when I thought you might, but when you said… What was the point in having fledglings around if you weren’t going to _make use_ of them.”

He sounds so forlorn that Kain slackens his grip automatically, leaving nothing behind except the rapidly fading marks of his iron grip and the healing punctures left by his claws. Raziel winces anyway, reaching up to rub at his sore throat and Kain steps back to put a good few feet between them.

“I said concise,” Kain says, hateful of the way his voice comes out. Gone is his usual assurance, his sangfroid, his confidence. He sounds _uncertain_ , undone so in the face of Raziel’s… Of Raziel. Of his professed adoration and his own uncertainty.

“Forgive me,” Raziel murmurs, but he does not stay on his knees for long. Now that Kain is no longer facing him down with a blade, he rights himself, standing straight with as much pride as he can muster, which is not inconsiderable, despite everything. “I only meant that, everything I am, I owe to you. And when faced with the… actuality that you did not want me, I… withdrew. To nurse my wounded pride, I suppose. To try and settle my mind so that I could serve you as I have, and ensure that I could continue to do so, considering my weakness.”

Kain drags a hand down his face, suddenly acutely exhausted. “And not once, apparently, did you utilise your supposed keen intellect to consider that perhaps you were operating on faulty or incomplete logic? Instead you took your based assumption and ran with it, inconveniencing everyone in the process? Good _god_ , Raziel, all this time I thought you had at _least_ half a brain rattling around inside that thick skull of yours.”

Inexplicably, Raziel smiles, a rueful twist of his lips. “My particular skills of reason and logic do not lend themselves to introspection, it seems.”

“Clearly,” Kain mutters into his palm. “You exhaust me, Raziel. Truly. You make the simplest of matters into nigh on unsolvable puzzles and twist everything into a mess that no one can help to untangle. I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes I dearly wish you’d be more like Turel. Straightforward. Direct... If a little dim.”

“Sometimes I wish that too,” Raziel admits, sheepishly. “But the matter is laid bare now, and I’ll accept whatever--”

“Don’t start with that,” Kain snaps. “No more talk of punishment or transgressions, I’ve no patience for it. Do you think me so unreasonable that I would claim recompense for every minor slight done to me?”

Raziel starts to shake his head but pauses, nose wrinkling. “I mean… You beheaded a fledgling for calling you a whelp.”

“I made an _example_ of a fledgling for acting without thinking,” Kain corrects. “And you’re fully aware of that. Raziel… I’ve never cautioned you against speaking your mind. Of all the fledglings I have and intend to raise, you should know by now that I hold you above them.”

“I know,” Raziel says softly. “But that’s only so because you raised me first. If you raised Turel or Dumah first, if I came after them or came last or any other hypothetical outcome… Things would be different.”

“It’s foolish to waste time with hypotheticals,” Kain tells him.

“And yet it is the role of a strategist to consider all likelihoods,” Raziel counters.

“Yes, of all _possible_ outcomes.” Kain shakes his head. “Agonising over what has _not_ occurred or come to pass, worrying yourself over what _might_ have been is the surest path to insanity that I know of. You _were_ first.”

“That’s not the point!” Raziel insists. “If I wasn’t your firstborn, you would not favour me. It’s that realisation that shook me, I think.”

“You really believe so?”

Raziel nods. “I do.”

Kain scoffs. “Then you really are an idiot.” He waves away Raziel’s wordlessly indignant exclamation with an impatient hand. “Do you think I favour the useless? The brash and the inept? Would I give my time and consideration to simpletons and braggarts and egoists? Though… Mm, I suppose you are rather egotistical, actually.”

“Perhaps we could have one conversation where you do not insult me?” Raziel suggests, disgruntled.

Kain narrows his eyes. “I’ll insult you all I like for the run around you’ve given me this past week. And my point stands. Do you truly believe that I would favour someone if they did not possess the qualities that I value? Since you _insist_ on dwelling on baseless hypotheticals, know this: were you _not_ the first of my fledglings, you would have won a place beside me regardless, through your own merit. I would have noticed you, I would have realised that you possessed the skills I needed for my destined campaign and I would have had you stand beside me. In all outcomes, in all of your supposed hypotheticals, Raziel, you would be my right hand. Does _that_ ease your distress?”

“Somewhat,” Raziel allows and Kain throws his hands up with a cry of frustration. “But if you’ll permit me to ask it, I have one last question.”

“Of course you do,” Kain grumbles. “And you are a liar because I know you and I know that as long as you live you will _always_ have questions.”

Raziel smiles faintly and Kain cannot pretend he is not pleased to see it. “I can’t deny that. You do know me. But… I have to ask, though the answer may not be what I want it to be… Do you… Do you know that I desire you?”

Kain inclines his head. “Yes.”

Raziel nods as though he was expecting this answer. “And… Do you… Is there any chance… You may want me, as well?”

Kain makes an appalling sound, wholly unbidden, like a startled animal. " _That's_ what this has all been about? _Truly_? You were affronted because you felt _unwanted?"_

Raziel shifts in place, looking distinctly uncomfortable and Kain resists the urge to groan into his palms in despair. Fledglings, it seems, are and will always be _exhausting_ , no matter how mature they may think themselves. It appears that, no matter how adept they may become, how independent, how proficient and capable, even the strongest of them will always desire Kain’s approval and attention above all else. Kain had been operating under the belief that Raziel _knew_ that his interest was reciprocated. They’ve danced around it before, many times, and Kain had every intention of acting on it when he felt the time was right. But, it seems that his intention to bide his time has been mistaken for disinterest, and that will simply not do.

With a heavy sigh that is equally fond and exasperated, Kain reaches forward, fisting a hand into the front of Raziel’s shirt, and pulls.

Raziel is not expecting to be kissed, that much is obvious. Whatever experience he may have possessed as a human has, as Kain suspected, been overwritten by his resurrection, but what his mind cannot recall, his _body_ keenly remembers. A soft gasp is the only warning Kain receives before his attentions are returned a hundredfold, Raziel pressing himself as close to his master as is physically possible and were he not warm and eager beneath Kain’s lips, Kain would find his inexperienced excitement amusing.

As it stands, Kain has little patience at the best of times. With Raziel responding so eagerly, vibrant and _wanting_ , Kain finds he has no patience left at all.

All this trouble because his fledgling felt unwanted. All this trouble for something solved so simply.

Kain does not particularly mind it. Not even a little. Not at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @glowstickjuice on twitter, come say hi!


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